


homo, fuge

by myownremedy



Series: homo, fuge [1]
Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blasphemy, Character Study, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, Faustian Bargain, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Soul Selling, Supernatural Elements, Translation Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-16 11:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2268624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/pseuds/myownremedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eduardo accidentally, drunkenly sells his soul to the devil, gets his shit together and moves the fuck on.</p><p>Written for the 5th TSN Big Bang.</p><p>(also available in Chinese)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Chinese Translation by Chabisi found here:[[x]](http://www.movietvslash.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=138666&extra=page%3D2%26filter%3Dtypeid%26typeid%3D23%26typeid%3D23) (registration required)**
> 
> Wow. How do I begin? This was inspired by 1) [this text post](http://marnz.tumblr.com/post/152528158234/markzuckerbergs-phantomrose96-fic-idea-where) 2) by Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 3) the song All Too Well by Taylor Swift.  
> Thank you to Alex for 1) half way inspiring this fic 2) giving me the idea to make a certain lead character a demon 3) for letting me pick her brains about Italy and 4) for making kick ass art. I love you :’)  
> Thank you to Fox for helping me with alcohol related things including brainstorming how Eduardo accidentally hurts himself in Part 2.  
> Thank you to Mina for being the best beta around and for also helping me with alcohol related things.  
> Thank you to Divya for so graciously teaching me about her culture so I could write Preeta (and other Divya) in a realistic and respectful way. Thank to Mia for graciously explaining to my simple white self what ‘aunty’ means in Desi culture  
> Thank you for Fran to sitting with me and finding pictures to use for her amazing art & fanmix.  
> Also, special shout out to 1) the big bang mods for making this happen and 2) my dog for tolerating me typing loudly right next to her face (though, I mean, she doesn’t have to put her head in my lap).  
> Notes: I have a very murky idea of how a hedge fund works and what economists actually do so this fic will be full of inaccuracies, I’m so sorry.  
> Title obviously from _Dr. Faustus_ by Christopher Marlowe.  
>  *Tan's face claims are: Samira Wiley, Angie Cepeda, goth Rinko Kikuchi, brunette Natalie Dormer, various.  
> *God's face claims are in the end notes but are not spoiler free, venture there at your own risk.
> 
> art & fanmix by alex found: [here.](http://sweetmadness379.livejournal.com/7422.html)  
> fanmix by fran found: [here.](http://branquignole.livejournal.com/55773.html)  
> YAY.
> 
>  disclaimer: no copyright infringement was intended, none of this is true. Please do not show with the subjects of this work.  
> edit (4-13-15): this is a transformative work. I make no money off of it. I do not own what inspired this work (The Social Network, Dr. Faustus), but I do own this work itself and hold full copyright over it. Thank you.
> 
> **warnings for: self-hatred, implied/referenced child abuse, serious medical things, almost death, depression, attempted suicide, alcoholism, crack elements, religious blasphemy, not otp compliant, I swear to God it has a happy ending**

The night Eduardo accidentally sells his soul to the devil, he’s drunk, sad, and his jacket is missing.

“Where is it?” Eduardo asks his empty room. “Fuck!” He trips over a discarded textbook – _Macro Economics –_ and stumbles, grabbing the edge of the bed to steady himself.

Next to hand, the letter summoning him to be deposed in his own fucking lawsuit sits unfolded, it’s neat typeface mocking him.

Eduardo sinks down onto the ground, rubbing his eyes. The letter is still mocking him, even though he can’t see it. His hands drop and he squints at the calendar.

_June 8 th: Graduation!_

Eduardo checks his watch. _June 5 th, 10:47 PM._

“Ah,” he mutters. “Need alcohol.”

Amidst the half packed boxes, the fucking deposition letter and a lot of scattered clothes (but not his fucking jacket), Eduardo finds a dusty, unopened bottle of Jack Daniels that Dustin had given him and Mark after Facebook had hit 100,000 users. It had been some sort of a joke. Eduardo doesn’t remember much from that day other than the chicken.

(Ow.)

Mark hadn’t touched it, because he preferred beer, and Eduardo had never touched it because he preferred scotch or tequila. Unfortunately, all of his scotch is packed.

Something in his head reminds him how often he got drunk and just stared helplessly at Mark, and he flushes and groans.

“Okay. Shot glasses.”

They’re packed, of course, and he refuses – _refuses_ – to go out and buy coke or some other random mixer.

Fuck Mark Zuckerberg. Fuck mixers. Fuck Facebook.

The deposition letter mocks him from on his bed. Eduardo sits down on the floor, leaning against his bed, and uncaps the bottle, then takes a swig. He doesn’t need shot glasses.

Turns out Special Edition Jack Daniels tastes like shit. It’s nothing like whiskey, which Eduardo was expecting, but no. It’s a hundred fucking proof and it burns so fucking much that Eduardo gasps, his eyes watering.

He can remember the joke now – Dustin had giggled while presenting it to Eduardo and even Chris had cracked a smile. Mark had been coding.

“Because you’re so classy,” Dustin had explained, “and Jack Daniels is so hick.”

“Also, you’re Portuguese, and this is essential American liquor,” Chris added. “It’s part of your education.”

“I’ve been in the States for _years_ ,” Eduardo had protested, but he had accepted it and put it on his desk, looked at it but never touched it. Not until today.

 

He gets drunk alarmingly fast. It _is_ a hundred proof, but in no time the room is spinning and Eduardo is trying and failing to stand up. The depositions letter catches his eye and he snatches it up. He has to grab for it three times before it actually works.

“Fuuuuuck,” he drags it out, too tired to snap the word off. “Maark.” Somehow he’s on the bed, face smushed against his blanket. “Actually,” he tells the empty room. “It’s my fault. I’m the one coming – ” a hiccup. The bottle of Jack is on the floor, the cap next to it. “Coming back for _everything_. Asshole.” Eduardo laughs. “You’re such an asshole, Mark. And you’re in California.”

_You didn’t come out._

“Yes, I _know_ ,” Eduardo lectures. He lifts his head up. Everything is fuzzy. With some difficulty he manages to rotate himself and reach down to grab the bottle of Jack Daniels. He takes a swig, slopping all over his dress shirt and laughs as the alcohol burns its way down his throat.

“I wish you were here,” he whispers, looking down at the Jack Daniels bottle so he won’t look at the stupid deposition letter. “I wish anyone was –” he hiccups. “ _Anyone_ was here. I just want a friend but you fucking took all of them.”

 _Like a divorce_ , Eduardo thinks, and laughs. It echoes oddly and he shivers, and takes another gulp.

“I would fucking –” another drink, and he gasps. “I would _sell my soul_ to have someone here. Someone who actually fucking cared.”

He’s at the height of self-pity and he knows it and it only makes it worse. Eduardo takes another drink, tipping the bottle up.

He doesn’t remember anything after that.

 

*

 

When he comes too, his head is mashed against a pillow, he’s drooling and someone is hitting his head with a sledgehammer.

“Stop,” Eduardo mutters, and groans, because talking fucking hurts.

“I’m not doing anything,” someone says and Eduardo jumps.

He sits up, entire body fuzzy, and looks around.

A short woman is sitting on the end of his bed, regarding him with one raised eyebrow. Her skin is four or five shades darker than his and her hair is curly on top and shaved on the sides. She looks – pitying. Amused.

She’s also a total stranger.

“Who the fuck are you?” Eduardo demands. Normally he would have asked more gently, because he, unlike _some people –_ Mark, he’s talking about Mark – actually has _manners_ , but his dorm is locked and he doesn’t know this person and can’t really remember last night.

A discreet glance at his bedside table shows an uncapped bottle of Jack Daniels.

“You don’t remember,” the woman says. Eduardo wracks his brains.

“Did we…”

“No,” the woman doesn’t let him finish his sentence. “No. You sold your soul to me.”

“…What?” Because _what?!!_

The woman smiles. It manages to be not nice and sympathetic at the same time. “It’s a contract, you can’t go back on it. Not even with a really nice lawyer, which apparently you have.” She holds up the deposition papers.

“Hang on,” Eduardo says, and he might still be a little drunk. “Are you – are you _the devil?_ ”

“I prefer Satan,” says the woman. “Full name: Satan, Lord of Darkness, Destroyer of Worlds, Duchess of Hell, Queen of Death, Empress of Suffering, The Fallen One, Tempter, etc etc etc. But you can call me Tan.”

“I…” Eduardo reached over and took another swig. It still burned. His head immediately felt better. Yep, still drunk.

“Um,” he says, because how does one talk to Satan? “I was drunk. It doesn’t count.”

“It counts,” Tan says, waving her hand at the Jack Daniels bottle. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Alcohol wasn’t a thing when the whole selling-soul-contract business was first evented.”

“And when was that, exactly?”

“The beginning of your world.”

“Okay, I need a minute.” Eduardo pinches the bridge of his nose. Then he takes another sip – more of a gulp – _because he sold his fucking soul_. “Why did I sell my soul to you?”

“You wanted a friend,” Tan says, and there’s definitely sympathy in her dark eyes. “Sorry about the whole…” she moves one elegant finger in a circle a few times, “Facebook thing.”

“So even Hell knows about that,” Eduardo says, flat. Alcohol does wonders for not feeling anything. He should try it more often.

“We both had a significant hand in it, actually,” Tan says, rubbing her palms on her jeans. “Me, and my twin.”

“Your twin?”

“God.”

“Of course,” Eduardo snarks, because he hasn’t been awake for ten minutes and this is already fucking too much. “Of course you guys did. What, is Sean Parker _actually_ a demon?”

“He’s human,” Tan says with a disinterested shrug. “But your friend Chris is a demon.”

“Chris is evil?”

“No,” Tan says. “Chris is just a demon. How do you think he’s so efficient all the time?”

“Ah,” Eduardo says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “Are there any other supernatural players in my life?”

“Christy. She’s an angel.”

“She is _not_ ,” Eduardo starts, heated, and Tan laughs.

“Angels and demons don’t work like you people think they do,” she says. “Angels aren’t always _good_.” A slow, dangerous smile unfurls across her lips. “I’m certainly not.”

“What about Mark?” Eduardo asks, because he has to know. Has to know if this whole thing has been – divine. If he’s being punished.

Tan’s expression shifts. “No,” she says, wrinkling her nose. It takes Eduardo a minute to realize she’s perplexed. “He’s human. He revolutionized the Internet and the way humans communicate, he did it with almost no funding and no help and he’s _human_.”

Eduardo is filled with a sort of fierce, twisted pride that he immediately hates himself for.

“That’s Mark,” he says, because what else is there to say? Mark is so fucking incredible that divine (does the devil count as divine?) players have noticed him and Eduardo is the fuck up in the corner.

He takes another drink.

“Yeah, I think you’ve had enough,” Tan says and the bottle is suddenly in her hands. She sniffs it and wrinkles her nose.

“So…” Eduardo says, and he’s not drunk enough for this. “Who’s going to be my friend?”

“Oh,” Tan says, and smiles. “I am.”

 

*

 

Between finals, packing and fucking _graduation_ , Eduardo doesn’t really have time to think about this whole situation. That’s what he was calling it – his situation. He keeps seeing Tan out of the corner of his eye, and sometimes she looked different but he always knows it’s her.

He graduates _magna cum laude_ , because he is not a failure at everything – he knows his father is thinking it, but neither he or nor Eduardo say it – and after his parents help move out of the dorm, after the dinner, after the painfully awkward conversation and the drinks, Eduardo returns to his hotel room and collapses onto the king sized bed.

Tan appears in the armchair in the corner.

“Why do you see me as a woman?” She asks, out of nowhere, and Eduardo props himself up on his elbows and looks at her.

She’s real, and he’s a little tipsy but not enough to hallucinate, and she’s fucking real. This is real.

“I – are you not?”

“I’m nonbinary, to use a modern term,” Tan shrugs. “It really depends on how other people perceive me. So – why do you see me as a woman? Do you hate women?”

No? Eduardo scowls at that, because he doesn’t. He’s a gentleman.

“You hate your mother,” Tan says after a minute, mouth twisting. “I see.”

“Excuse me,” Eduardo snaps, “but can you not do your whole ‘all knowing’ thing? It’s rude.”

“It was a guess,” Tan gives him a half smile. “But that’s pretty common, for survivors of –”

“Don’t.” Eduardo orders, and Tan falls silent. They look at each other and then Eduardo sighs and sits up, burying his face in his hands.

“This is real,” he says.

“It is,” Tan says gently.

“I don’t feel any different,” Eduardo says quietly. “Not – lighter, or anything. Not like I’m missing anything.”

“Your soul isn’t heavy,” Tan tells him. “That’s your heart.”

Eduardo’s entire body is heavy, weighed down like there are stones in his pockets and he _hurts_ in a sort of vicious, angry way that makes him think of Mark.

“You really hate yourself, don’t you?” Tan asks. Eduardo peeks at her from behind his hands. Her eyes are so dark he can’t look away, and the breath leaves his lungs as he swallows.

“Yes.” He whispers.

“Okay.” Tan says. She sits with him, and they don’t say anything, and Eduardo is glad.

 

*

 

It’s early on still, and Eduardo is avoiding his parents by reading in his hotel room. Tan is there too, stretched out on the other side of the bed and reading his economics textbook, which she thinks is “stupid, but fascinating.”

“You said Chris wasn’t evil,” Eduardo says out of nowhere, looking up from _The Economist_. “But he’s a demon.”

“I’m not evil,” Tan responds, “and I’m the devil.”

“Can you explain that, please?” Eduardo asks, because he’s having trouble and he’s totally sober, and he’s doing his best.

“All things need balance. That means multiple sides. Sometimes it’s simplest to have two opposing forces – what you have named good and evil. The truth is we’re just opposite. Order and Chaos, if you like. But nothing is _that_ binary.” Tan smiles. “In the Beginning, before we knew this, there was just God. And then God realized They needed an opposing force, and I volunteered.

“God is your twin?”

“We weren’t born twins but we are now. We’re not…related. We’re just twins in the term of balance. Opposites. Two sides of the same coin.”

“Did you used to be an angel?”

“Yes.”

“But you fell?”

“I…sauntered,” Tan is smiling, eyes wrinkling up at the corners and Eduardo falls a bit in love with her, because that’s who he is; he loves too much, and too easily.

“Vaguely downward?” He asks, laughing, because he’s read Good Omens, and Tan laughs outright.

“You volunteered,” Eduardo says after the laughter stops. “So you didn’t mind? You don’t miss…Them? I was,” he laughs, self conscious, “envisioning a Romeo and Juliet situation, here.”

Tan’s face is blank, a careful non-expression.

“It’s complicated,” she says, and Eduardo thinks about Facebook.

 

He doesn’t want to move back to Miami. His father avoids him and his mother stifles him and he loves and hates them both, in different ways. There are too many shadows between them.

He applies to a hedge fund in New York City and is accepted, and his parents help move there, help him move into a respectable apartment. It’s a loft in the financial district, with it’s own courtyard and plenty of natural light.

“ _It’s good_ ,” his mother says in Portuguese, looking around his apartment, “ _that you have money from that summer._ ”

From betting on oil shares. Eduardo is painfully aware of how much money he has from that ($278,976) and how many shares of Facebook he has (12).

 _“Yes_.” Eduardo agrees in the same language.

“ _When do the depositions start?_ ” His father asks, standing near one of the large windows and scowling out at the view beyond.

Eduardo swallows, turns to put something away – a pot, into a cupboard. His hands are shaking.

“I don’t know.” He switches to English, doesn’t notice until he feels two sets of eyes on his back. Mark does not get to have Portuguese. “There is another lawsuit. The Winklevoss and Divya Narendra are also suing. It could…delay us.”

“Hmph,” his father grunts, his disdain clear in the small sound and Eduardo busies himself with unpacking another pot.

 

His parents leave that evening and Tan appears. She looks different this time, looks Latino, like him, with a long face, full lips, and wildly curly hair.

“Nice place,” she says, helping herself to a glass of wine. Her nails are long and sharp looking and Eduardo wonders, for what feels like the hundredth time, how he got himself into this.

“You look different,” he says instead. “Nice, though.”

Tan waves an airy hand. “I had an errand to run,” she says. “Needed a different costume.”

“Oh.” Eduardo pours himself a glass of wine – a small one. He doesn’t ever want to be that drunk, ever again.

“When d’you start work?” Tan asks, and that’s the creepy thing about it. She _knows_ things without Eduardo having to tell her.

“In a week,” Eduardo admits.

“So you have time to kill.”

“Yep.”

“And the depositions?”

“I don’t know,” Eduardo repeats, thinking of his father. “There’s another lawsuit.”

“Yes,” Tan agrees. “I suppose there is.”

 

*

 

Work is – stressful. Eduardo works to analyze data and trends and then report them as often as possible so the higher ups can make investments. His awareness of a hedge fund is as good as an economics majors’ is, but he knows that the average person has an only nebulous awareness of them, and he explains this to his coworker, Preeta, over drinks. She laughs at him, flipping back her shiny black hair, and orders another round.

“You don’t seem _happy_ ,” she accuses him, and she’s known him two weeks but she already knows that. Eduardo flushes, blames the heat of the bar and then remembers she probably can’t see him too well. The bar they’re in is hip and artfully dim; it caters to the young professionals with money, and it’s full of them tonight.

“Is anyone happy at their job?” he flips the question, grinning at her and Preeta sucks on her lime and laughs.

“I am,” she says. “But my brother hates his.”

“What does he do?”

“He works for a law firm, in Boston,” Preeta waves her hand in Massachusetts’ vague direction. “Went to Harvard law.”

“I went there. Not, law, but Harvard.”

“Of course you did,” Preeta says, teasing, and Eduardo rolls his eyes and picks up a new drink.

 

He settles into his new job and he slicks his hair back and buys expensive shoes and expensive suits and gets his shirts starched and dry-cleaned. He wears expensive cologne, buys fresh produce and has a kitchen that looks sterile and modern; almost antiseptic in the fact it’s almost never used.

At night, he lies awake and hurts so much he can hardly breathe.

He starts sleeping less, peers at the bags under his eyes in the mirrors and mumbles curses to himself in slippery Portuguese, because he’s vain enough to care about under eye circles, but practical enough to know that he’ll have more. A lot more. He’s an economist; he’s never going to be will rested.

He starts staying late, hunched over in his cubicle in the dim light of the classy green lamp they gave him. His coworkers notice but don’t comment, and he thinks he’s getting away with it – the endless espresso, the lack of sleep, the shaking hands and the constant numbers – until he looks up to find Tan sitting on his desk.

She looks like she belongs there, in a pencil skirt and long sleeved blouse. She’s in what he thinks of as her neutral state; the thin, elegant black woman with the short hair and the large doe eyes. He blinks at her, too tired to really say anything, and his eyes follow the line of her body down to a bit of ink that peeks out from the sleeve of her blouse.

“This isn’t good for you,” Tan says, standing up until she’s behind him. She leans down and presses _ctrl + s_ , the motion a whisper of what Mark does every five seconds and Eduardo inhales sharply, a sudden pain coalescing beneath his ribs.

“I’m…working,” he says when he has a voice again and Tan throws him a look, fingers still on the keys. She powers down his machine effortlessly and then takes a step backward, graceful even in sky-high wedges.

Eduardo stands shakily, grabbing his suit jacket from the back of his chair. Tan takes his arm, like he’s escorting her to a ball, and leads him out of his own office. The lights shut off behind them, whether due to her influence or to some energy saving mechanism, Eduardo doesn’t know.

The doorman waves them out of the building and then they are outside, the air still muggy even at 1 am. The street lamps give Tan a halo, the light reflecting and cascading on her skin. She is otherworldly in the most literal sense and now she looks it; she steps forward, holding his hand, and he extends his arm but does not follow. Tan ends up turning to look at him, the axis of her body slowly shifting and Eduardo feels the axis of his world shift, and hates it.

“I need to stop,” he says suddenly, and he is not drunk but he’s brutally honest nonetheless.

Tan tugs on his arm and he falls into step beside her; they walk in silence for the block. The noises of the city overwhelm them, the cars and the distant sounds of the bridge and boats, the laughter, the whooshing of air conditioners and the dinging of store bells.

“Stop what?” Tan prompts as they stroll across a crosswalk.

“What?” Eduardo asks. The night has washed away his thoughts and all he notices is taste is the grit in his mouth, the fatigue like a film on his skin. “Oh. I need to – to stop making people the center of my life.”

Tan glances at him, quick, her eyes bright even against the grimy darkness of New York City.

“Having more than one friend would help.” She suggests quietly, voice remarkably free of judgment and Eduardo throws back his head and laughs. He wonders what people will think when they see them together; perhaps they are in love, perhaps they are on a date and she has said something immensely charming and funny, instead of something rational and painful in its honesty.

It is common sense. It is absurd.

“I don’t really know how to – to not fall into someone’s orbit.”

“I think you willingly put yourself there,” they pause at a stop-light. The light pulses green, then yellow, then red and they cross the cross walk. Tan is far too at ease in her heels to be a human woman. “Maybe it’s just where you’re the most comfortable.”

“I’m a mess.” Eduardo says with a dry, self-deprecating laugh that people usually find charming. Tan just raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t suggest he go to therapy. Eduardo refuses to consider it.

At his building, she kisses his cheek and watches him unlock the door. When it creaks open, he glances over his shoulder, but she’s gone.

 

*

 

With Mark it had been so easy to fall into his orbit and Mark hadn’t even _wanted_ it, had rarely looked up from his coding or acknowledged Eduardo. But Eduardo had wanted so much, had wanted acknowledgment and maybe that’s why he jumped at the chance to fund Mark’s project when Mark approached him.

He had been Mark’s friend, though, surely. Had hung out with him, had gotten drunk with him. Had read his blog at 2 am, had rushed over when Erica broke up, had spent time with Mark _and_ Erica. Had waited for Mark outside the academic hearing, had waited for him outside of his suite, had levered him out of his chair and into the bathroom or kitchen, because some things were essential to survival.

Once he had put his hand on Mark’s shoulder and had ended up touching skin; the neck of the t-shirt was stretched out and gaped wide and Eduardo was touching smooth, soft skin that stretched over a shoulder blade and Mark’s collarbone. And Mark had been so boneless, so tired, that he had leaned back in his chair and turned his head so he cheek was pressed against Eduardo’s hand.

“Mark,” Eduardo had counted to ten before saying anything, had forced his voice not to shake. Mark’s eyelashes had fluttered, hands still on the keyboard, utterly exhausted. He was tired and relaxed, and Eduardo had stood there, drawn tight as a bowstring with an arrow pointing straight at Mark’s heart.

“Wardo,” Mark had said, quietly, and fallen asleep.

Mark’s pulse was slow and strong and Eduardo could feel it like a drum that resounded through his body, from his nose to the soles of his feet. It was a low, steady counterpart to the frantic fluttering of his own pulse, the excitement, the amazement, and the hunger for more.

 

*

 

July sweeps into August, which staggers into September and Eduardo finds himself missing school and hating it – he misses Harvard _before_ , resents _after_.

Preeta is also fresh out of school. She catches him looking repeatedly at his calendar and finally perches on his desk, shoving one of his calculators out of the way.

“We’re going out tonight,” she informs him, crossing her legs. Eduardo glances at them out of a deeply ingrained habit rather than any lust, and then looks up at her face. She’s smirking at him. He shrugs.

“Why?”

“Do you really need a reason, Saverin?” she demands, eyebrows drawing together. He stares at her and she sighs. “Because you’re obviously college-sick, and need to be reminded how awesome it is to be out of school.”

“Right,” Eduardo says, leaning back in his chair. It’s very comfortable, especially ergonomic for people who spend too much time at their desk and Eduardo thinks, for the thousandth time, of Mark, and scowls. “Okay. What time?”

Preeta raises an eyebrow at his expression but doesn’t remark on it.  “Eight. Be finished by then!” She hops off of his desk and saunters off and Eduardo sighs, and gets to work.

 

Preeta orders a gin and tonic for herself and a scotch for Eduardo and they talk about absolutely nothing for the first hour. And then, when Eduardo is loose and warm from his scotch and Preeta is a bit more giggly then usual, Preeta leans forward seriously and Eduardo knows he’s fucked.

“You cofounded Facebook,” she says and it’s like a slap in a face. Eduardo jerks. He’s sitting down but had he been standing, he would have staggered back like he did the first time his father punched him in the gut. Preeta winces and grabs his hand, squeezing it. “I mean,” she says, hasty, “we don’t have to talk about it.”

“It’s…” Eduardo trails off because it’s _not_ fine, but Preeta is his friend. “I did.” He admits, like it’s a secret. “I cofounded it.”

“And…”

“And Mark – I mean, _they_ diluted my shares.”

Preeta blinks at him. She has incredibly thick lashes, the kind dolls have and Eduardo peers at her for a minute, focusing on them, trying to forget the question.

“Because I was a shitty CFO,” he says finally. “Because – we had – it was different for me, then it was for other people. There was a parting of…views.” He drops his head into his hands. “I don’t know,” he confesses finally. “There was so much going on, and I was flying back and forth every week, and they didn’t tell me everything, it just happened.”

“You didn’t know?”

“It was an ambush,” he’s numb now, the wound too deep to hurt and Eduardo feels the scar tissue bunching around the probing words. “It was…it was a mistake. The entire thing was a mistake.”

Preeta’s face is unreadable. “You need another drink.” She doesn’t ask, _are you still friends with Mark?_ She doesn’t ask, _was it really your fault?_ She doesn’t ask, _are you sure it was a mistake?_

It’s good. Eduardo has no answers for those questions.

(No, he’s not still friends with Mark. He just doesn’t know if Mark knows that.)

 

*

 

September blurs into October. Eduardo looks up one day and sees the leaves of the trees that decorates streets turning scarlet and copper. He checks the weather, sees the chill in the air is new and semi-permanent and hunts again, fruitlessly, for his missing jacket.

(“Buy a new one,” Tan suggests.

“No!” Eduardo snaps, and Tan laughs at him.)

It’s halfway to Halloween when Chris calls him, his voice creaky from phone static. Eduardo skulks into a corner outside of his building that smells like stale cigarette smoke and cradles the one between his ear and one hand.

 _“Wardo,”_ Chris says, crackling. Eduardo thinks, _demon_ and swallows. _“I’m going to be in New York in a few days and I was hoping we could get lunch.”_

“Oh!” Eduardo says, scuffing a foot against the dirty pavement. “Yeah. Yeah, when?”

_“Next week.”_

“Is it…just you, or?”

 _“Just me.”_ Chris confirms. _“It’s a press…release…thing. It’s complicated, and I doubt you’d care if I explained it.”_

Eduardo remembers, _Efficient_. He thinks of Tan, saying _Chris is a demon, not evil._ “I have a new friend,” Eduardo says, not sure what he’s saying.

 _“Oh?”_ Chris’s voice is flavored with enough surprise that it translates through the phone.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “I think you know her.”

_“Did she go to Harvard?”_

“No.”

_“What’s her name?”_

“She told me to call her Tan.”

 

There’s silence. Eduardo shakes a bit, scuffs his shoe again. He has his back to the door, something he would ordinarily never do. He curls forward, hunching, feeling Chris’s slow breathing on the other side of the phone.

“ _You’re fucked_ ,” Chris says, very quietly, and disconnects.

“I know,” Eduardo says. No one is listening.

 

*

 

Chris stares at Eduardo from across the table and Eduardo does his best not to fidget.

The waiter comes by, prattles about specials and Chris orders for both of them – an apple chicken walnut salad with grapes, arugula, and goat cheese. He does not ask Eduardo if Eduardo minds.

(Eduardo doesn’t really mind. He trusts Chris and he’s still trying to figure out how he feels about that.)

They’re in a secluded corner, the light from the window gilding Chris’s hair and glinting off of the silverware. Eduardo’s back is against the wall, and he can see the door.

“So, how have you been?” Chris asks, taking a sip of water. His eyes are very dark, but still blue. Eduardo had forgotten that about him.

“Good,” Eduardo says, and wonders for a minute if it’s a lie. He has been good, but he is also an empty man with a hole in his chest who cannot log onto Facebook without sweating. Is that ‘good’? Or is that normal? “I work at a hedge fund.”

“Oh? Which one?” Chris asks. He’s holding a fork almost idly, fingers wrapped around it. Eduardo wonders if Chris is going to stab him with it.

“Blackstone.” Eduardo smiles. “What about you, Chris?”

“Oh, you know,” Chris waves a careless hand. It looks artful. It reminds Eduardo of all of Tan’s little movements – movements that look graceful, and artful, and are supposed to look careless. He suspects they are not. “Work is work.” He pauses delicately. “Mark is Mark. Dustin is insufferable, as usual. And California is still so warm…it’s nice to feel autumn properly.”

“It’s weird,” Eduardo says, obediently playing a part. “The leaves change colors, it gets colder. I know it’s normal but…”

“It’s not Brazil.” Chris smiles without teeth, sympathetic. The waiter appears, carrying their food and asks them if they want fresh ground pepper. Chris says no; Eduardo says yes. The waiter obeys, and then withdraws.

Eduardo looks at Chris, and the atmosphere changes, constricting. Chris is holding a fork and a knife, the air of civilization, and Eduardo is afraid.

Chris leans forward. “Your soul is missing,” he says, smiling, but there are flames in his eyes and his voice is dark. “I could always see it, can always see them fluttering around, perching on the bones of your ribs – but yours is gone.”

“She has it.” Eduardo admits. Chris jerks the hand holding the knife impatiently. The movement is fast, is jerky. Is inhuman.

“Yes,” Chris’s voice is clipped. “You can’t get back, you know that.”

“It was a mistake.”

“It always is.” Chris takes a bite of his salad. “Why?”

Eduardo copies him. The goat cheese is very good. He thinks, idly, about visiting Greece one day. “Why what?”

“Why did you do it?” Chris’s face is carefully blank. Eduardo is familiar with this expression of his; he’s seen it directed at Mark hundreds of times.

Eduardo flushes and sees Chris shrug. “I’ve heard it all, Wardo. Money, power, women – there’s no use being embarrassed now.” He takes another sip of water.

“I wanted a friend.” Eduardo speaks without realizing, voice flat.

Chris drops his glass. It shatters all over the hardwood floor of the restaurant and Eduardo ducks instinctively, hands over his head. He straightens when he hears the waiter rushing over to them, and as he looks up he sees Chris staring at him.

Chris’s mouth is a thin line and his eyes are wet, and Eduardo wonders for the first time, _do demons have hearts?_

“Sir, are you alright?!” The waiter demands, looking down at the glass. Chris looks away from Eduardo, up at the waiter, and smiles.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I slipped.”

 

*

 

Chris goes home, hugging Eduardo tightly with one arm curled around Eduardo’s neck. Eduardo watches him disappear into a yellow cab and flips up the collar of his peacoat. He’s very cold, suddenly, fingers shaking, as if Chris has taken all of the warmth with him. That’s ridiculous, it’s ridiculous – he forces himself to turn around, to begin to walk back to his apartment. It’s close to the East River, right across from Brooklyn and today it smells fresh, the brisk wind almost erasing the standard city smells of garbage and overcrowding and instead carrying the briny smell of the water, and the freshness of the air.

A white woman with a sneering mouth is waiting outside his apartment, brown hair pulled back into a severe looking braid. Eduardo has spent the last block watching her carefully; she hasn’t looked over at him, not once, but her mouth curves into a knowing smile.

He stops in front of her.

“You’re getting better,” Tan says, smiling. He unlocks the front door and holds it open for her; it’s a habit, one Dustin would always tease him for.

“I saw Chris,” Eduardo tells her in the elevator, stabbing the _4_ button.

In the elevator, Tan leans against the wall, eyes half hooded. “I know.” She answers. The mirrored walls show infinite versions of her, all wearing navy blue wool, her dark eyes mocking him, her many mouths curving into half smiles.

Eduardo is surprised that she has a reflection. He avoids looking at himself, Chris’s words from earlier playing in his head.

“Did you go to Italian?” Tan asks as the elevator dings and the doors roll open. Eduardo shakes his head, happy to leave the mirrors behind. He and Tan walk down the quiet, carpeted hallway, him slightly in front. “Why?” He pauses in front of the door, half turns to her. “Do I have garlic breath?”

Tan laughs. “Open the door,” she orders and he obeys, shutting it behind her and locking it.

She smells like lilacs.

Eduardo unbuttons his count, watching Tan do the same.

“Why Italian?” he asks, taking her coat from her and hanging it up.

“Oh,” Tan says, like it’s nothing. “I found him during the Renaissance, in Milan. He was Cristoforo, back then.”

Eduardo crosses to his kitchen, shoes knocking against his hardwood floors. Oak, the realtor had said. He opens a cupboard, pulls out a glass he had bought with his parents at Crate & Barrel, fills it with water, takes a drink, and then almost drops it into the stainless steel sink.

“ _Cristoforo?_ ” He repeats, voice cracking. “How old is Chris, Tan?”

She wrinkles her nose.  “Five hundred and….seventy five? Seventy six?” She shrugs. “At least five hundred and seventy years old.”

“Oh, my god,” Eduardo says faintly. “I didn’t – I didn’t realize that you could… _become_ a demon.”

Tan folds onto the couch gracefully, her eyes on his. “Yes,” she says, head tilting. “It takes time.”

“Will that…will that happen to me?” Eduardo asks as he turns his back on her, rummaging in the cupboard for absolutely nothing.

“No, I don’t think so,” Tan answers. Eduardo thinks she might be smiling.

He relaxes, shutting the cupboard door and pours her a glass of water, brings it and his own over to the couch where she’s sitting. Tan isn’t looking at him, is looking at the courtyard – empty, and bleak in the fading light.

“You should really do something with it,” she suggests.

“Like what?”

“Mm,” Tan sips her water. “Plants?”

“It’s the wrong season for that,” Eduardo points out, and Tan shrugs.

“Tell me about lunch,” she orders, and he obeys.

 

 

People are beginning to want reports on their money, want to know how much they can spend on gifts and holiday transportation. Eduardo works feverishly and stays late. Preeta, having bullied her way into getting the cubicle across from him, does too. More then once they abandon any pretense of work and wander down to the break room together, making bad coffee.

(Preeta pours too much cream and sugar into hers. Eduardo is politely appalled.)

When they’re not out on the town together, their dynamic is different, softer. Preeta treats him like her brother, is all hands and foul mouth when they’re alone.

Eduardo tries very hard not to fall in love with her.

“Fuck _this_ ,” Preeta groans, flipping through a file. It’s 12:37 AM and the client – Jonah Boroughs – had called their office at 3 that afternoon and demanded his report be done by the next day. “What is it about money that makes people so awful?”

Eduardo smiles grimly and tries not to think about Mark. He likes to pretend it doesn’t hurt anymore, that he’s not affected. So well it’s working well. He likes this route better than being openly angry, than having his heart scraped raw down to the nerve, down to the pulsing, living mechanics of it all.

He likes scar tissue. He encourages it.

“I don’t have time for this,” Preeta is mostly talking to herself, scowling fiercely at the report in front of her. “Aunty wants to introduce me to someone tomorrow, I need to at least be well rested, I _do not have time for this_.”

“Oh?” Eduardo asks, looking up. “Is that serious? Whenever my mother wanted to introduce me to someone, she was hoping we’d get married.”

Preeta is momentarily distracted. “She knows you’re gay, right?”

“Hey,” Eduardo protests, but he’s smiling. “I’ve had girlfriends.”

“Is it like a 60-40 situation?”

“It’s a whoever I’m attracted to situation.”

Preeta gives him a long look. “Ahuh,” she says, clearly not believing him. Mentally, Eduardo edits his answer. _It’s a whoever will love me back situation_.

“I fall in love really easily,” Eduardo admits after a long pause, looking back down at the reports. “Too easily.”

“I know,” Preeta agrees. For a minute the silence is taunt and dangerous, and then Preeta sighs. “No, it’s not serious. My aunties are always setting me up.” She gets up from her desk, moving until she’s perched on Eduardo’s. He leans back in his chair in order to meet her eyes.

“How many aunties do you have?”

“They aren’t actually related to me,” Preeta explains, grabbing one of his pens and doodling idly on an envelope. “They’re like – friends of the family. Spinsters.”

“I thought Indian women had arranged marriages.”

Preeta kicks him in the shin and he winces. “Don’t be an idiot,” she snaps. Eduardo holds up his hands.

“Sorry,” he says. “I still don’t know a lot.”

“Traditional families do arranged marriages,” Preeta says after a minute, still doodling. She’s drawn a cock and balls, surrounded by flowers and thick, ornamental leaves. “But it’s not like…life or death. You can say no if you want.” She wrinkles her nose. “This aunty of mine, Aunty Bhuvi…she’s traditional, but my parents aren’t.”

“So she’s just ‘introducing’ you instead of….”

“Yeah.” Preeta flips the envelope over and begins a new doodle. “You might know him, actually. His name is Divya. His parents really like mine because my brother showed Divya around when Divya was a freshmen at Harvard.”

Eduardo’s stomach swoops, lurching up. He coughs, picks up his coffee – now barely warm – and takes a gulp. Preeta watches him, eyebrows raised.

“Sorry,” Eduardo gasps, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “But – is his name Divya Narendra?”

“Yep,” Preeta says, pointing at him with her pen. It’s a very fancy pen. He can’t quite believe she used it to draw a penis on an official company envelope. “My aunty is actually his mother’s younger sister, believe it or not.” She pauses. “You _do_ know him. From the Harvard Investors Association?”

“That, and, from Facebook stuff.”

Preeta frowns. “Divya was involved in Facebook?”

“No, he wasn’t. That’s the whole problem.”

“I don’t understand.”

Eduardo runs a hand through his hair.

“Mark…crashed the Harvard servers with a really stupid project of his. It was offensive, very sexist. He got academic probation because of it, but it also got him noticed. Divya and the Winklevii – sorry, the Winklevoss Twins, Cameron and Tyler, were trying to launch their website.”

“The Winklevii?” Preeta repeats.

“Mark used to call them that,” Eduardo flushes.

“He’s not a very nice person, is he.” Preeta doesn’t phrase it like a question.

“Ah, um, he has his moments.” Eduardo looks up; Preeta is raising her eyebrows again. “Anyway -  ah, Mark started Facebook and then Divya and the Winklevoss accused him of stealing their idea. They had apparently approached him with a similar idea, called ConnectU.”

Preeta absorbs this in silence, tapping her pen against Eduardo’s desk. “Did you know?” she asks finally.

“No,” Eduardo meets her eyes. “I didn’t find out until I got their letter letting us know they intended to sue.”

“Damn,” Preeta says. Eduardo reaches over and snags the envelope, tugging it away from her. She’s drawn a caricature of him.

“My hair is not that big,” Eduardo objects, and Preeta laughs.

“Do you like Divya? Is he a good guy?” she asks, twisting the pen until the nib disappears.

“He’s smart, passionate. Has a temper. Has a strong moral compass. Was always nice to me until he found out I was working with Mark on Facebook.”

“Hmm.” Preeta purses her lips.

“Look, why don’t you get out of here?” Eduardo suggests, tugging the reports closer to the edge of the desk. “I can finish these. It’s not problem.”

“Are you sure?” Preeta asks, which means she wants to go.

“Yeah,” Eduardo smiles up at her. “But – you have to tell me all about your hot date.”

“Aunty is introducing us, which means she’s going to be there, there’s nothing hot about it,” Preeta grumbles. She reaches over the divider for her share of the reports and slaps them down on the end of Eduardo’s desk. “I owe you, babe.”

“Kick ass. Go to sleep.”

“Will do.” Preeta drops a kiss on his forehead and walks off, the clipping of her heels echoing on the marble floor. Eduardo doesn’t watch her go.

 

He’s up til almost four working on the report, and contemplates sleeping in his desk and just staying there; maybe it’ll be easier.

But he doesn’t; he stumbles home, unbuttoning his shirt in the elevator. He shucks it, his shoes and his pants as soon as he gets through the door and locks it, and passes out fully clothed on top of the duvet.

Eduardo’s not rich enough to have an assistant that will come physically pull him out of his bed so it’s a miracle he walks up at 9, despite sleeping through three alarms. He’s still late.

It takes him forty-five minutes to make it into work, and he _knows_ he looks like shit. His hair isn’t slicked back, so it’s enormous and his shaving job is patchy at best. He’s also pretty sure this tie doesn’t go with this shirt, _all._

But even all of that doesn’t explain the looks he’s getting, and it definitely doesn’t explain the thumbs up.

Are people just pleased he got the report done? He doesn’t even know some of these people.

Preeta accosts him even before he’s sat down at his desk.

“I tried calling you, like, six times!” She snaps, taking his briefcase from it, setting it down on his desk and then grabbing his arm so she can tow him back towards the door.

“I know,” Eduardo says. His voice is more rasp than not today. He really doesn’t do well on less than six hours of sleep, and he thinks he got less than four.

“Why didn’t you pick up?” Preeta demands, dragging him through the doors of their building and into the alcove people use to smoke. There are already people there. “Out!” she barks and they obey, stubbing out their cigarettes or stepping on them and leaving.

“I was running late,” Eduardo explains, and then yawns. “It took me…almost four more hours after you left to finish the report…” another yawn. “What’s this about, Preeta? What’s wrong?”

“Eduardo,” she says and he begins to sweat, because Preeta’s face is composed, her tone heavy and solid like steel. “Blackstone signed a really big client. We just found out. They signed a year long contract.”

“That’s…good?” Eduardo sits down on the bench and peers up at her. “I don’t understand what the problem is.”

“Eduardo,” Preeta says again, hands fluttering by her sides. She’s wearing pink today. He really likes the color. “The new client…it’s Facebook. It’s Mark, Eduardo.”

Eduardo stops breathing.

“What?” He says, but his voice is an extension of himself, is just as brittle and cold as his body, as his heart. And _damnit_ , this isn’t fair, he was making a life for himself, he was doing okay, how _dare_ Mark come in and ruin it, how _dare_ Mark do this. How did he even find out? Eduardo hasn’t logged into Facebook for a _long_ time, hasn’t updated his work information – he _can’t_ , hasn’t figured out how to use the website, hasn’t figured out how to get past the yawning black hole in his heart.

“Oh, my god,” Eduardo gasps, clutching at his face and turning away from Preeta, collapsing in on himself the way he would whenever his father used his fists instead of his words.

“Eduardo!” Preeta is in front of him, suddenly, pink fabric and brown skin and black hair. She’s clutching his hands, is kneeling in front of him. “Eduardo, Eduardo,” she keeps repeating his name. “Breathe.”

“He’s not supposed to be here,” Eduardo tells her, voice hitching. He stops, swallows, blinks until his eyes have stopped burning. He does not allow himself to come apart that way, not anymore. “He’s not supposed to have found me – this is mine. He’s not supposed to take it.”

“Honey,” Preeta says. “Mark wasn’t just a business partner, was he?”

“No, he was my best friend – but –”

He focuses on Preeta’s face, is relieved to see she’s no longer so composed. It’s like he can read her thoughts, can read _what kind of person does that to their best friend?_ in the way she clenches her jaw.

“He can’t be here,” Eduardo says at last, when his pulse is no longer thundering in his ears and everything has become cold and numb and far away. It’s late October, and the frost has been collecting on top of the manicured lawns of Battery Park, on the stubborn leaves on the trees that line the streets. Eduardo thinks perhaps he is being frosted over too, thinks that perhaps it’s safer that way.

“He signed a twelve month contract,” Preeta says quietly. She’s sitting next to him now. “He’s here for at least a year.”

“No,” Eduardo says, shaking his head. “No. I’m not.”

“Honey…”

“You don’t understand,” Eduardo says. “I’m –” _I’m in love with him_ , he does not say. “He –” _he betrayed me. He ruined my life. He broke my heart. He can’t do this._ “This – ” _This isn’t fair. It’s not right. I hate this. How dare he._

“Eduardo,” Preeta says, pulling him into a hug. “I think I understand, a little. I’m so sorry.” She releases him. “Just don’t do anything rash, okay?” She pauses. “You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

“I can’t be where he is,” Eduardo says finally, turning to her. “Do you understand? I can’t – ”

“You have to leave to take care of yourself,” Preeta is smiling at him. Her voice is soft. “I do.”

Eduardo sags, leaning against her. “Thank you,” he says softly, squeezing his eyes shut.

“What are friends for?” Preeta asks, and laughs.

 

Chris calls when Eduardo’s out to lunch, trying to figure out how to draft his letter of resignation.

Eduardo stares at the phone warily. It buzzes insistently, almost knocking against his plate of spaghetti. He finally picks it up, accepts the call.

“ _Eduardo?”_ Chris sounds like a carefully contained bomb. “ _Eduardo, are you there?”_

He’d been planning to say something nasty, and cruel, and pointed. He’d been planning to be self righteous and unyielding, to knock Chris flat on his back and then end the call. Instead he curls his fingers around his fork and asks, willing his voice not to shake: “How could you?”

“ _Eduardo,_ ” Chris’s voice is tender. “ _I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t realize he’d do that.”_

“I can’t believe you,” Eduardo snaps, ducking his head. The other patrons of the restaurants are studiously ignoring him. The back of his neck is hot. “Blackstone is _mine_. Mark had no right – you had no right –”

“ _I didn’t tell Mark where you worked, Eduardo_ ,” Chris interrupts. _“I just – he asked how you were and I told him you were doing okay –”_ Eduardo wonders if that’s true, if this is ‘okay’ because all of the scar tissue he’s spent damn near two years cultivating has been ripped off like it was only a scab. It was too easily; had he been lying to himself? Or is this how it is? _“- and that you were working for a hedge fund. And I told him if he wanted to know any more than that he’d have to ask you himself._ ”

Eduardo covers his eyes with one hand. “Chris…you can’t tell Mark that.”

“ _I know!”_ Chris snaps. _“I was…flustered, from our lunch. I forgot that if you try to set a fucking boundary with Mark he’ll take it as a challenge instead of respecting it like a grown adult.”_

Eduardo catches his waiter’s eye and signals for the bill. “He probably cross indexed every hedge fund in New York with my name.”

“ _That’s exactly what he did,”_ Chris sounds rueful. “ _We’ve both spent too much time around him, because we both actually understand his computer jargon.”_

Eduardo switches the phone from one hand to the other in order to grab his wallet.

“ _Are you in the office?”_

“No, at lunch. I’m having Italian.” He pauses, fishes out his credit card and puts it into the server book. The server takes it and his plate. “Tan was surprised we didn’t have Italian.”

“ _Tan talks too much,_ ” Chris snaps and Eduardo laughs, then quiets.

“They say Mark signed a twelve month contract with Blackstone.” He says. “Is there anyway to get that cancelled?”

“ _No,”_ Chris says simply. _“I’ve looked into it, and asked Mark. He doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. He thinks he’s doing you a favor, bringing your fund business._ ”

“What?!” Eduardo demands, so loudly that the couple at the nearby table look over. “ _I don’t need it!_ I don’t _need_ his business, Chris! Or his favors.”

“ _I know_ ,” Chris assures him. “ _Eduardo – he’s trying to be nice.”_

“Well, he can stop it,” Eduardo snaps. The waiter returns, offering him the server book. Eduardo uses one hand to open it, wedging his phone between his ear and shoulder as he signs the receipt and adds a tip. “This isn’t – this isn’t the way to go about asking my forgiveness, or something, and fuck him for thinking it is!”

People are staring. Eduardo finds he doesn’t care. It’s liberating.

Chris _hmms_ , a sound that means he wants to ask something but doesn’t think he can. Eduardo knows that sound from being friends with Chris for years.

“I don’t care,” Eduardo says, rising and collecting his coat and briefcase, and stalking about of the restaurant. He pauses on the sidewalk in front of it; the cold bites into him but he can’t put on his coat, not yet. “I don’t care if he’s hurting too, Christopher. _He_ did this. It’s _his_ fault. And I am _tired_ of being the bigger person, the better person. He doesn’t deserve me. Maybe he never did. And don’t you _dare_ ask me to reach out to him, or to feel bad for him, or to forgive him.”

“ _Do you think it’s possible?_ ” Chris asks bluntly, all pretense gone. Eduardo likes Chris best blunt: he likes to know what he’s working with.

He shoves away the thought that says, that’s what he liked about Mark.

“Possible to forgive him? I don’t know.” That, at least, is honest – but then again, Eduardo was never a liar. “I don’t think so.”

He hangs up so he won’t keep talking. He’s shaking.

The doorman to the restaurant walks over, offers to hold his briefcase, offers to help him with his coat. Eduardo accepts, and fuck, maybe he’s pathetic. But he lets himself pretend the doorman’s quick, efficient, impersonal touches are out of genuine care. Of course it’s not, and of course Eduardo _knows_ that. They’ve all got a job to do. Eduardo is just trying to figure out when Mark’s job became ‘break Eduardo’s heart as often as possible.’

 

*

 

He hands in his letter of resignation the next day. His boss, a reserved woman named Ola Zawadzki, eyes him as he sits quietly in front of her desk.

“Eduardo,” she says, her slight Polish accent tugging on the syllables of his name. “What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

Ola almost never swears. She reminds himself of his mother, always put together, lipstick flawless, clothes without a wrinkle, voice soft and polite until she’s pushed past her breaking point. Ola never swears, has played the game of Wall Street by being so soft, so polished, so _feminine_ that she became a tiny, sharp blade, ideal for being wedged between ribs, ideal for striking the heart.

(Preeta had explained all of this, was able to understand the way one woman understands another; Eduardo had listened and tried to reconcile this with the knowledge his mother, who is so similar and yet is no more a tiny, sharp blade then she is someone who cusses freely.)

But Ola’s swearing now, red lips twisted in a frown and Eduardo straightens his shoulders and meets her gaze.

“What job is possibly better then this, Eduardo?” Ola continues after a pause. “Wall Street is a white man’s club. I gave you an in. Are you really going to pass it up?” _Are you really going to throw this back in my face?_ Is heavy between them.

Eduardo resists the urge to fidget. “It’s personal,” he says finally, having to drag the words out of his throat where they are lodged beneath his Adam’s apple.

“You can’t be personal in business,” Ola says. The words linger for a few seconds before her eyes widen almost unperceptively, her lips parting.

 

(Rewind, back to June, when she had sat behind this exact desk and asked him about Facebook. Rewind to when he said, “It was personal for me, it wasn’t for him. I was stupid. It won’t happen ever again.” And she had seen that he was nursing this wound the way someone else would nurse a beer, tears and condensation mixing, and let it go, had smiled and said _I tend to have a spot soft for fellow first generation immigrants_.

Rewind to a week after that, when she had emailed him telling him he was hired, and to not let it ever happen again.)

 

 

“Yes,” the words punch out of him; his hands ball into fists. “I know.”

“I was under the impression that Mr. Zuckerberg signing a contract with us was your business,” Ola says, red lips pursed. She’s still meeting his gaze, staring him into the face while the cracks in his mask widen. She’s always been tough. He can’t even look at himself in the mirror anymore.

“No,” Eduardo reins himself back in, a proverbial hand pressed over his very physical wound. “I haven’t spoken to Mark in two years.”

He’s shaking, from exhaustion, from too much caffeine, from having this conversation – he doesn’t know. It’s a finely controlled tremor that Ola doesn’t deign to comment on. Instead she stares at him, pretty and pale like a hunting hawk and he swallows and stares back, mouth dry. He’s blinking too much. She’s blinking hardly at all.

He expects her to say _you’re making a mistake_ , to say _you’ll regret this_ , to say _you can’t run forever_.

(Is he running? Or is he limping, tracking blood in the snow, something wild and pathetic slinking off to a dark den to die?)

Ola shakes her head at him, just once, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.

“And if he follows you to your new job?” She asks. Her voice is the sound a twig makes when it is snapped in half. “What then?”

Eduardo stands up, buttoning his jacket and smiles at her. “Thank you so much for the opportunity and for your time,” he says, gaze oscillating between the space next to her head and her eyes. “It’s been a pleasure.”

He leaves, shuts the door carefully behind him to put a solid sheet of glass between them. And then he walks slowly, carefully, down the glass-lined hallway, passing through the larger room full of cubicles and computers, his shoes clacking against the polished marble floor.

It is 2004. They have just hit a million members. He has been shot in the heart with an unforeseen gun. He is dying.

It is 2006. The gun continues to surprise him. His wound festers. Nothing has changed.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up with Tan in her neutral form stretched out on the bed next to him, on top of the covers while he is under them. There’s a glass of scotch on his nightstand. He has a headache. He can’t remember how he got here.

Tan blinks awake and looks at him, and Eduardo wants to touch her, to reach out and feel the warmth of her skin. He curls his hands into the edge of his sheet and tries to smile. It feels foreign, like it is a new expression.

“You cut your hair,” he rasps, mouth dry, and Tan smiles, reaching up to run a hand over her head. Her hair has been buzzed down, black stubble decorating her head.

“What do you remember?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“I thought you never wanted to get this drunk again,” Tan says quietly, managing to keep her tone neutral.

He scowls at her.

“I guess I changed my mind.”

“Mhm,” Tan agrees. Then, sitting up in a single smooth motion: “Do you have a hang over?”

“I’m fine. I can handle it.” Eduardo says, also sitting up. Tan looks at him expressionlessly.

“Most people would have a hangover from that much scotch,” she points out. “You’re supposed to have a hangover from that much scotch.”

“I can handle it,” Eduardo repeats. Tan frowns at him, brow creasing and eyebrows drawing together. Eduardo looks away.

He gets up, flinging the covers off and trudging to the kitchen. His floor is cold; the temperature must have dived down during the night.

He fixes himself a glass of water, squinting at the light filtering in through his windows, and concentrates on taking long, slow sips.

Eduardo shoves away all acknowledgment of his headache and forces his eyes to focus. It takes him a few minutes of staring at the balcony to realize that it’s snowed, the railings piled high.

“Tan!” he calls, not turning around, still clutching his glass of water. There’s snow outside and it’s not even Halloween yet. “Tan, it snowed!”

He hears the soft sounds of her walking, barefoot, on the hardwood floors, feels her paused at his shoulder.

“How odd,” she says. She moves forward, a smile as sharp as talons curving her lips. “We should make snow angels.”

“Are you kidding?!” Eduardo claims. “No. I hate the snow.”

Tan rolls her eyes, her smile losing its sharp edges.

“Also, you can’t make any kind of angel, can you?” Eduardo relaxes too, somehow comforted by Tan’s presence. His grip on his glass loosens and he sets it down, turns to rummage around in his cupboards. They are pathetically bare.

“I’m an angel all by myself,” Tan reminds him for the umpteenth time. “You keep forgetting, I don’t have horns or a pitchfork.”

“Well, that would be ridiculous,” Eduardo agrees, producing a bottle of red wine, a mostly empty bottle of scotch, and a box of crackers. “Not very incognito of you at all.”

“We need to go grocery shopping,” Tan says, inspecting the box of crackers. Eduardo doesn’t even remember buying them. Maybe they came with the apartment. “Go get dressed.”

Eduardo obeys. He knows the sidewalks will be salted so he doesn’t bother with the snow-boots that his mother insisted he buy when he was first accepted to Harvard. But he does include gloves and a scarf.

“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you in jeans,” Tan says when he emerges. She’s produced shoes and a long woolen coat from nowhere, and is busy tucking a scarf into her collar. “Ready?”

They set out together, bundled arm in arm. It’s still snowing, flakes of it getting caught in Eduardo’s hair. He can’t help but notice that no snow dares land on Tan.

As if sensing his thoughts, Tan raises a single dark hand. Snow swirls around it, like her fingers are the center of a storm.

Tan laughs. “There is a lot of this, back home,” she explains. They are in an alleyway, mostly obscured from view by passersby. In Cambridge, people would have been reluctant to leave their homes this early. They dealt with snow every year but their method of dealing with it was to roost like a bird and go out only when necessary. New York is not like that. Eduardo thinks about this, and watches the snowflakes dance around his friend.

“Very Dante of you,” Eduardo says dryly. Tan winks at him.

 

The grocery store is overwhelming, partially due to his hangover and partially due to the fact that every decision seems momentous after quitting his job. He has well over half a million dollars collecting dust in a few bank accounts, knows what he has to do if he should need more, but doesn’t know how to select a good head of lettuce.

Tan clucks at him and assists, selecting bell peppers, oranges, spinach, carrots, onions, and a spaghetti squash. She’s like that in every section, buying things she deems healthy and essential. Eduardo follows her, pushing the cart slowly.

“Sourdough?” Tan asks, holding up a loaf of bread. Eduardo nods.

It is a bit like having his mother around – a no nonsense, competent version of his mother, a version of his mother that is sympathetic but not judgmental.

Eduardo remembers what Tan had said, several months before:

_“Why do you see me as a woman?” She asks, out of nowhere, and Eduardo props himself up on his elbows and looks at her._

_She’s real, and he’s a little tipsy, but not enough to hallucinate, and she’s fucking real. This is real._

_“I – are you not?”_

_“I’m nonbinary, to use a modern term,” Tan shrugs. “It really depends on how other people perceive me. So – why do you see me as a woman? Do you hate women?”_

_No? Eduardo scowls at that, because he doesn’t. He’s a gentleman._

_“You hate your mother,” Tan says after a minute, mouth twisting. “I see.”_

_“Excuse me,” Eduardo snaps, “but can you not do your whole ‘all knowing’ thing? It’s rude.”_

_“It was a guess,” Tan gives him a half smile. “But that’s pretty common, for survivors of –”_

“What are you thinking about?” Tan asks, inspecting salad dressings. Eduardo reaches past her and grabs an Italian Vinaigrette.

“My mother,” he admits. They move onward.

Tan opens her mouth and Eduardo shakes his head.

“I don’t want to do this right now, not here.” Not ever.

Tan nods, and directs him towards the dairy products section.

 

They struggle back to Eduardo’s apartment, the snow seemingly melting before Tan’s feet can touch it. At Eduardo’s door, Tan sets down her bag, kisses his cheek and disappears.

Eduardo lets himself in, trying to juggle two bags of groceries and his keys, then sets his bags on the kitchen counter.

For a while he stares at his groceries, at the fruits and vegetables, the carton of milk and the lunchmeat.

He ends up putting them away methodically, pausing only to realize he doesn’t have a fruit bowl.

He grabs a dinner plate instead, arranges his oranges, peppers, onions and squash on it. They don’t all fit. He ends up stacking his onion on top of his squash.

Everything else goes in respective cupboards or the fridge. For a while he just takes it all in; color in his kitchen, food in his cupboards and fridge. Life in his apartment. Adulthood.

Carefully, Eduardo takes out a glass and his bottle of scotch. He pours himself a drink. He doesn’t look back.

 

If someone were to ask Eduardo about the next week, he wouldn’t be able to say much. He cannot remember, because his days blur into sameness. There are a few constants: sleep that is somehow too much but not enough. The weight of a glass of scotch in his hand. Constant, slow snowfall. The isolating loneliness of it all.

He does get out of bed everyday, does get dressed every day. He does not shave. Eduardo exists in a state of perpetual drunkenness, the scotch smoothing out his edges, making everything a little bit more bearable.

There is a hole in him that is festering, pus and blood and alcohol and Eduardo cannot help but itch at it. Each time he touches it he thinks of Mark, and Facebook, and Sean, and it hurts but he cannot stop. Eventually he is so raw that it is all he thinks about, and then he pours himself another glass of scotch.

He is not an idiot. He alternates with water, keeps a low but constant level of alcohol. He doesn’t keep perfect track, but he knows how to stay alive. How to filet himself open while missing the vital things, the heart and the bone and the brain.

 

He has been like this before, deep in his cups, at the bottom of the barrel and looking to go deeper. It had been winter 2005; Facebook had hit one million members, and Eduardo was no longer a part of it.

Chris had dragged him back, slowly but surely, weaving himself into Eduardo’s life so smoothly he couldn’t say when it definitively happened. But one day, he woke up clear eyed, shaky like something newborn, and had crawled out of bed.

He had found Chris, napping in a chair – to watch over Eduardo? – and Eduardo had woken him, had rested a trembling hand on Chris’s shoulder and watched as he came to life, breath quickening.

“Come on,” Chris had said when he was awake, his dark eyes staring up at Eduardo. “We have to get you shaved.”

Eduardo’s hands had trembled too badly to hold the razor so Chris had done it, quick efficient strokes of the blade across Eduardo’s face. Eduardo, unable to look at himself in the mirror, had watched Chris. He took in the way the corners of Chris’s mouth were turned down deep, his freckles and the wrinkles in his brow, around his eyes.

We are so young, he had thought. We are both so young.

“Thank you,” he had said when he was clean-shaven, Chris wiping away the foam. Chris had paused.

“Please, never do that again,” he had said, voice cracking, vowels rounded by the Carolina accent that only peeked out when Chris was upset.

“I’m sorry,” Eduardo had mumbled, ducking his head. When he looked up, Chris was still watching him and there was suddenly too many unspoken words between them – about Mark, about Facebook, about Dustin not calling.

Eduardo hadn’t wanted to hear any of them. He turned away.

 

On the eighth day, Eduardo runs out of scotch. This is a problem for two reasons: 1) scotch is expensive and can’t be bought in a convenience store, and Eduardo doesn’t want to leave the house anyway; 2) he is not ready to stop being drunk.

The bottle of red wine and crackers, prizes from his earlier expedition into the cupboards, still sit on the counter.

The bottle of wine is a good year, something expensive and fine that he would have never bought for himself. Possibly a house-warming gift from his mother.

Eduardo stares at it for a minute, scratching at his new beard with one hand. He has a corkscrew, doesn’t he? Somewhere?

Searching for it hurts his head, which is how Eduardo finds himself unpeeling the wine’s foil wrapping with one hand and gripping a steak knife with the other. He saw Dustin open a bottle of wine with a knife before, and it had seemed basic. Stab the cork, then twist the knife up and out at an angle. Easy.

The first two times Eduardo tries to stab the cork, he misses, the knife skating over the glass of the bottle. He wraps his free hand around the top of the bottle to steady it and stabs again; this time he stabs true, the blade sinking into the cork. Grunting, Eduardo angles it and starts to pull up.

He doesn’t quite understand it, or how it happened, but one minute the knife blade is in the cork and the next it is slashing deep along the index finger of the hand wrapped around the top of the bottle. Blood blooms everywhere, and Eduardo stares down at it in horror.

Blood drips down the bottle and onto the counter top as Eduardo slowly puts down the knife. After a minute, he puts down the bottle. His finger is bleeding magnificently, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s just horrifying.

He grabs the paper towel roll right off of its holder, tearing off a sheet of paper towels to wrap around his finger. Blood stains through almost immediately.

“Oh my god,” Eduardo whispers to himself, voice raspy from disuse.

It’s still snowing outside, so he pulls on a coat – not the one that’s missing, he still hasn’t fucking found it – and shoes, fumbling with buttons and laces respectively. He keeps having to pause to replace his make shift bandage.

As if in a dream, Eduardo stumbles down all four flights of stairs, his building spitting him onto the street. In New York, it is always, always faster to walk so Eduardo does, stumbling through the slush and snow, shoes slipping in the puddles and the salt. He’s still clutching the roll of paper towels.

The nearest hospital, Lower Manhattan Hospital, is six minutes away on a day without snow, ice, or injury. Today, it takes much longer.

Eduardo thinks, absently, he can feel the alcohol leaving his body. He has always been able to hold his drink well – Mark had once pronounced him, very dryly, 'functional.' And he was, though he hadn’t been this last week.

His finger is throbbing, and snow is beginning to fall again. Eduardo jabs the crosswalk button with one bony elbow and shivers, ducking his head against the snowflakes. He has another block to go, at least, and the outer layers of his paper-towel bandage is damp.

He crosses the street and turns right, pausing at a trashcan to discard his soaked through bandage.  Blood splashes, bright, against the snow at the base of the metal trashcan. Eduardo swears, quietly, and rubs at it with a booted foot, quickly rewrapping his finger, and continuing on.

 

The ER checks him in, asking for his insurance, his name, and if he needs a Spanish translator. Eduardo stares at the receptionist, a small woman with platinum blonde hair.

“No,” he says finally, clutching his finger. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

“You’ll be seen as soon as possible,” she chirps, sliding his insurance card across the counter to him. “Our waiting room is to your left.”

“Sorry, but how soon will that be?” Eduardo asks, sliding his insurance card into his pocket. He doesn’t want a repeat of fumbling with his wallet.

“About twenty to thirty minutes,” the receptionist replies with a smile. “Next!”

Eduardo sits next to a man rocking silently back and forth, clutching his head. He’s across from a young woman trying to nurse a screaming child.

He fidgets, cradling his finger and feeling the snow in his hair, on his collar, slowly melt and dribble onto his skin. In the ER it is warm, overly warm from the crowded bodies. He doesn’t bother to remove his coat, clutches it to him and kills time by trying to guess why everyone is here.

A physician’s assistant whose nametag reads Maria takes him to a back room and peels back the bandage. Eduardo, mostly silent, avoids looking at his finger as she cleans it. He has never been a fan of blood, of wounded things.

“Dijeron que es posible que necesite un traductor,” she says, still not looking at him, still peering at the cut.

“What?” Eduardo asks, frowning. This makes her look up at him. She opens her mouth to repeat herself and Eduardo cuts her off. Portuguese is similar enough to Spanish that he can guess what she said. “I don’t need a translator. I don’t even speak Spanish.”

Maria shifts in her chair. “They must have assumed from your name,” she says at last, meeting his eyes with her own, serious ones. “I’m sorry.” Even as she speaks, she is dabbing gauze at his cut. Eduardo looks down, can see Maria moving delicately enough that his skin doesn’t get caught in the gauze.

“It’s fine,” Eduardo mutters. “I just – want this taken care of.”

“Of course.” Maria says. “Can you hold this gauze here? I need to get supplies.”

Eduardo obeys, head drooping forward and down. Soon enough, Maria returns with an armful of supplies, which she puts on the table. Eduardo shuts his eyes and listens to her fuss with something, until the gentle flick of her tapping a needle makes him look up.

“This is going to help stop the bleeding,” she explains, and nods at the gauze. “You can remove that.” He obeys and she sits down and bends close, almost obscuring his hand. He barely feels the sting of the needle.

She drops the needle in the biohazard/sharps bin and pats at his hand with gauze again.

“How long ago did you cut yourself?”

“Oh,” Eduardo blinks at her. “Maybe forty-five minutes ago?”

“I’m surprised it hasn’t stopped bleeding. Has the bleeding slowed down at all?”

Eduardo frowns, looking down at his finger, covered in gauze. “No,” he says. “It hasn’t…clotted.”

“That’s very odd,” Maria says, frowning. “Sit tight for a few minutes so that has time to kick in, and I’ll be right back. Keep pressure on that, will you?”

 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there. His finger is starting to burn in a way he can’t ignore, the way he’s been able to ignore it until now. His throat is dry. The lights overhead are ruthless.

He isn’t sure what day it is. When he goes to check his watch, he finds he didn’t put it on.

He’s trying to figure out if it will be worth retrieving his phone from whichever pocket it’s in when Maria returns.

He removes his hand and she checks his finger. He’s still bleeding.

Maria is frowning again, lines like parentheses linking her nose and mouth. Eduardo puts his head next to hers to better peer at his finger and sighs.

Maria pauses.

“Mr. Saverin,” she says, in a quiet, soothing tone. “Are you drunk?”

“Not really, not anymore,” Eduardo gives up any pretense. “I was, when I cut myself.”

“How did you?” Maria asks, getting up to prepare another syringe.

“I was trying to open a bottle of wine.”

Maria raises her eyebrows. “A corkscrew did that?”

“With a steak knife.”

Maria’s mouth is a thin line; almost non-existent. She checks her watch. “It’s only now noon,” she tells him. This manages to be judgmental without actually being a judgment. Eduardo is, distractedly, impressed by how she did that.

“I’m going through a bad break up,” he tells her, and Maria’s eyes soften by fraction. “I’m not usually drunk before seven pm.” For the past week, this has been a horrific lie, but she doesn’t need to know that. No one needs to know that.

“Having alcohol in your system messes up your blood’s ability to clot,” Maria explains, sitting next to him again with another syringe. “It’s pointless to give you another dose, so this will make it so you can’t feel me giving you stitches. Now, sit still.”

It hurts. Eduardo clenches his jaw and makes a fist with his other hand, because it burns wherever Maria jabs the needle. He’s relieved when she tosses the syringe into the sharps bin. Maria laughs softly.

“If you weren’t drunk,”

“– Tipsy –” Eduardo corrects her.

“it would hurt a lot more.”

Eduardo shudders.

Maria produces things that look like fishhooks. Eduardo flinches away and she grabs his arm to stop him.

“I need to stitch you up,” she tells him, mouth quirking. She doesn’t actually laugh at him, and he’s grateful.

Whatever she gave him works. He watches the hook-needle lay it’s first stitch, and then has to look away. He can’t remember if he’s eaten today. His stomach is protesting violently.

“Tell me about her,” Maria says, sensing his discomfort.

Eduardo quiets, not bothering to correct her. He had said a bad break up because it was the first thing that came to mind. It was relatable. It was forgivable.

But, in his case, it was true.

“Devastating,” he says, voice catching on the dryness of his throat. He needs a drink other than scotch, something non-alcoholic and soothing. “He was devastating.”

Maria hums. “Almost done,” she says. Then: “The best ones always are.”

“It’s fine when they’re hurting other people. But as soon as it’s you, it’s unbearable.”

“It was always going to be you, sooner or later,” Maria tells him, discarding one fishhook-needle for another. “That’s the thing with those people. No one is safe.”

“He wasn’t that bad.”

“They never are. But they were that bad to us. So, does it matter how bad they really are or not?” She sits back. “All done. Let me clean it up.”

As she patting his wound dry, he confesses: “I’m Brazilian. I speak Portuguese.”

Calm brown eyes meet his own. “You’re a long way from home, Eduardo.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that.

She fits him with a finger splint and tapes it to his finger in silence, rotating his finger gently to get the best fit.

“Take that off after two weeks,” she instructs. “Do your best to keep it dry. Keep the bandage on for 48 hours, then clean and change it; after that, change it every 24 hours. We’ll be referring you to a hand surgeon to make sure you didn’t sever a tendon.” She pauses. “I won’t be including this in the notes, so your insurance company won’t find out, but: stop drinking so much. It won’t help change anything. You just have to move on.”

 

It’s still snowing when he leaves the hospital, sans his bloody roll of paper towels. He goes straight home. The snow is easier to walk through, the streets easier to navigate. People are on the sidewalk, looking for a place to have lunch. They ignore him.

His apartment is incredibly warm compared to outside. The air is stale. He locks the door behind him, takes off his coat with difficulty and hangs it up, and then lays down on the floor.

He can smell something rotting – his fruit, probably. It’s only been eight days since he went shopping. The heat probably sped up the process.

Eduardo presses his cheek against his expensive carpet, shuts his eyes, and sighs.

When he opens his eyes again, the sun is setting. He doesn’t know what time it is. Tan is there, crouching down in front of him. She cards long, pale fingers through his hair. She’s white today, wearing the same sneering, brown haired body she wore when he saw Chris. But her face is gentle, the sneer gone.

“You’re a mess,” she tells him. He groans in response. His hangover is here and it is real. “C’mon, get up. Let’s get you to bed.”

 

The next day, Eduardo gets up, showers, shaves, and prints off 5 copies of his résumé and cover letter. Tan is no where to be found. He throws out his rotting fruit, leaves the squash and onion, cleans out his fridge, and scrubs the blood off of his counter. He throws away the bottle of wine and the empty bottle of scotch. He bleaches the nefarious steak knife.

His finger hurts like a bitch, but he’s just grateful it was his left hand and not his right.

Over the next week, he sets up four interviews. Two go moderately well. The third, at a hedge fund, they call him Edward and look confused when he corrects them. He walks out.

The fourth, at Washington Mutual, makes him a job offer three days later, which he accepts. He’ll be working to predict market and stock trends, and advise investors. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before. They were very impressed by his work with oil shares in 2003.

(“Have you done much with that algorithm since?” They had asked.

“No,” Eduardo had admitted. “I’ve been too busy with school. I’d like to revise it to encompass crops, but I haven’t had the time.”

“We’ll be very interested to see what you do with it.”)

His office mate is a hyperactive guy named Max who went to Brown and is sort of pathetically funny. He looks more like a surfer than an economist. Eduardo doesn’t really know what to make of him.

 

He takes himself out for a drink at the bar he and Preeta frequented. It’s early still, barely past five o’clock, and the bar is mostly deserted. Eduardo stays away from scotch, and wine, and ends up nursing a gin and tonic.

That’s how Erica finds him.

“Eduardo?” she says, pausing in front of his table and for a minute, Harvard comes roaring back and the Erica from then, knitted cap and all, overlays this Erica, with stylishly curled hair and dark lipstick.

“Erica?” He asks, his question echoing hers. “Wow, hi! I didn’t know you were in New York.”

He stands up and they embrace. She’s always been tiny, almost a foot shorter than him and she feels breakable in his arms.

“I’m here for a neuroscience conference,” she explains, stepping back and smoothing down her skirt. Now she mentions it, she does look very professional, in a button up and pencil skirt with tights. “I’m presenting on the MTHFR Mutation.”

“Oh?” Eduardo sits, gesturing for her to do the same. “What is that?”

“It’s a mutation that means the bearer can’t synthesize L-methylfolate from folic acid, which in turn means the bearer can’t produce certain neurotransmitters like serotonin, which helps prevent depression.” Erica sits, signaling the bartender.

“Wow,” Eduardo says. “That’s – wow. Is it very common?”

“More than you would think,” Erica says, nodding. The bartender appears with a vodka cranberry; Erica dimples at him. “But anyway, enough about me. How are you? What happened to your finger?”

Eduardo brandishes his splinted finger in her direction. “Oh, I cut it while I was making myself dinner.” It’s a lie he’s adopted with ease. He wonders how many people know the truth. “I’m alright. Just got a job at Washington Mutual.”

“Getting ready to go home for Thanksgiving?” Erica asks, and then pauses. “I’m sorry – do you celebrate Thanksgiving?”

“We do, though I think Pai is a bit confused by it,” Eduardo forces a laugh. “Yeah, I leave tomorrow. What about you?”

“Conference finishes tomorrow,” Erica takes a sip of her drink. “Then I bus home.”

“Are you – are you in graduate school?”

“Oh! Yes. At Johns Hopkins.”

“Wow.” Eduardo whistles.

Erica makes a face. “A lot of student loans,” she confesses. “But – neuroscience pays well, so hopefully it won’t be a problem.”

“Yeah?” Eduardo raises his drink to her. “I can get behind that.”

Erica laughs. She is, Eduardo allows himself to notice, very beautiful. Very kind. He wonders how Mark went so wrong.

She doesn’t mention Mark. Neither does he.

“I better get going,” Erica says after a few minutes, digging around in her purse for change. “I’m meeting some friends at our hotel. I just needed a drink after the last panel.”

“When do you present?”

“Tomorrow,” Erica says, and makes a face.

“I’ll keep you in my thoughts,” Eduardo smiles. “Go ahead, I’ll get your drink.”

“Oh! Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Erica stands and rounds the corner of the table, embracing him again.

“You’re a good man, Eduardo,” she says softly. She smells like lilies. “Make sure you stay that way.”

And then, without so much as a backwards glance, she’s gone.

 

*

 

He drinks too much at Thanksgiving, can’t really remember too much of it. He remembers giving a heavily edited reason for why he has a new job, remembers telling his standard lie about his finger and assuring everyone he’s getting the splint off when he goes back to New York. He lies about work, says he’s really swamped and won’t be able to come home for Hanukkah. Everyone sees how much he’s drinking. No one says anything.

That is, after all, the Saverin way.

 

*

 

The doctor pronounces his tendons intact, removes his stitches and slaps another fancy band aid on his cut, telling him to keep it on for another week and then he’ll be good to go. Eduardo is hung over and enormously grateful. He cannot imagine having to rehab his finger because he was stupid, and lovesick, and drunk.

Preeta calls him as he’s on his way home from the doctor.

“I want to see you,” she orders over the phone and Eduardo smiles. He’s walking home, collar turned up against the cold. It’s not snowing, miracle of miracles. “It’s been forever.”

“It’s been three weeks,” Eduardo interjects.

“It’s been at least a month,” Preeta corrects.

“Alright, then,” Eduardo allows. He nearly collides with a man hanging fake holly outside his store. It’s December 3rd, for crying out loud. “What would you like to do?”

“Have you ever been ice skating?”

 

Eduardo has been ice skating a few times – once with Christy, and once with Mark, Dustin, and Chris. Ice skating with Preeta is a completely different experience.

“I used to do ballet,” she explains, skating a flawless circle around him. Eduardo likes to take the it’s like walking only with knives for feet approach. “And I did figure skating for a couple years.”

“Have you always lived in New York?” Eduardo asks, trying out more of a gliding motion and frantically pin-wheeling his arms when he realizes he doesn’t know how to stop.

“Yeah,” Preeta says, skating over to grab one of his arms. He clings to her, ignoring the fact he has eight inches and at least fifty pounds on her. “Stop, you’ll make me fall.”

“Sorry,” Eduardo rights himself, with difficulty. “We don’t have this nonsense in Miami or São Paulo, or Rio.”

“Mmm, I had forgotten,” Preeta says, taking his hand and leading him slowly around the skating rink. “What age did you move?”

“Thirteen,” Eduardo answers.

“Do you miss it?”

He doesn’t know what to say. “Sometimes,” he admits. “But…we moved because Pai found out I had been put on the kidnapping list by this really horrible gang.”

Preeta gasps.

“Yeah,” Eduardo nods. “Because Pai was such a well known business man. So we moved to Miami.”

“Jeez,” Preeta whispers. “That’s really intense.”

Eduardo laughs. “It’s better than being a thirteen year old and having personal security. Can you imagine how big my head would have gotten?”

“It’s already enormous,” Preeta teases. “Look at how big your hair is.”

“It’s the humidity,” Eduardo mumbles, and Preeta laughs.

She skates away, going absurdly fast and he watches her, content to be on the sidelines. Preeta even does a small jump and Eduardo claps, the sound muffled by his gloves.

It’s only after she’s returned to his side and they trade skates for regular shoes that Preeta begins to grill him.

“So,” she says, accepting a cup of hot chocolate, “how’s life?”

“Eh,” Eduardo says, making a face. “Fucked up my finger, got a job at WaMu –”

“You’re a banking economist?” Preeta demands, and laughs. “Super down-grade, Saverin.”

“I interviewed at a hedge fund, but they called me ‘Edward,’” Eduardo complains.

“White people!” Preeta shakes her head.

“Anyway,” Eduardo drawls. “Thanksgiving was a shit show, it always is, and I got out of going home for Hanukkah.”

“Nice,” Preeta says, and gently bumps her styrofoam cup of hot chocolate against his.

“What about you?” Eduardo asks. “Is that…a nose ring?”

It totally is, a gold one. She’s wearing a red bindi too, half covered by her slouchy beanie.

Preeta sighs. “It is,” she admits. “I’ve had it since I was sixteen, chill out.”

“I’ve never seen it – well, I guess you wouldn’t wear it in in the office.”

“Yeah,” Preeta wrinkles her nose. “Life is good. Work is good, boring as fuck without you. Family is good. We celebrated Diwali a couple months back, which was good.” She pauses.

“What about Divya?” Eduardo prods, and Preeta ducks her head.

“Things with Divya are…good,” she admits, not looking at him. “I’ve actually seen him a couple times since…you know, our first date.”

“You like him!” Eduardo laughs. “Wow.”

“I want us to all hang out,” Preeta says, looking up at him. She looks fierce, eyes narrowed. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Preet,” Eduardo says, grabbing her hand in his gloved one. “For you? No problem. None at all.”

Preeta smiles, and overhead, the Christmas lights twinkle.

 

*

 

2007

 

The first thing Eduardo does in the New Year is make himself a strong cup of coffee and moan about his hangover. The second thing – well, the second thing worth mentioning – is that he goes to the local Whole Foods and buys himself a plant.

It’s a sorry looking succulent, something the cashier checking him out called a Hen and Chicken plant.

“Don’t over water it,” the guy had said. His name tag had said North. He sort of had reminded Eduardo of Max. “Just keep this lil guy warm and close to strong light.”

“Isn’t it a she, if it’s a hen and chicken?” Eduardo had asked, unable to resist, and the guy – North – had looked thoughtful. Eduardo had left him too it.

Now he sets up the plant up on the end of his table, near the sliding windows of his balcony.

He remembers Tan suggesting he should do something with his balcony, maybe get some plants. He remembers telling her it was the wrong season. It’s still the wrong season, but Eduardo doesn’t know what else to do.

He fixes himself a sandwich and sits in the chair closest to his plant, watches it critically as he eats.

“This year is going to be different,” he tells it. The plant doesn’t say anything. It is suddenly the embodiment of his hopes and dreams for this new year, for his new life.

He spends the rest of lunch researching succulent care on his laptop.

 

2007 both drags and skips along at the same time. Eduardo gets to know Max, who is from California but has a lot of old moneyed family on the east coast. He’s also married and expecting a kid, which – wow. Eduardo can barely take care of himself. He works because he should, not because he strictly has too. Max has a family to support.

Wow.

“We got married in college,” Max explains over Chinese take out. They’re crunching numbers for a report due in about eight hours. It’s dark and cold outside, and Eduardo’s eyes hurt from looking at his screen so long.

“Had you been together for a long time?” Eduardo asks. Max has passed him the picture of his wife he keeps on his desk. She’s dark skinned with a blond streaked afro and full lips.

“No,” Max shakes his wavy blond hair out of his face. “I met her freshmen year. This sounds so cliché, you know? But when you know, you know. And I knew.”

“How did you meet?”

“We were snowboarding at Yawgoo.” And suddenly the surfer vibe shifts. Max isn’t a beach boy, he’s a snow surfer. They’re sort of interchangeable, in Eduardo’s limited experience. “We met on the lift, and then sat together on the bus back to Brown.”

“Brown has shitty snowboarding,” Eduardo ventures.

Max laughs. “Totally,” he agrees. “I wish I had gone to Western Washington so I could have been close to Baker. But, parents wanted me to go to Brown. And I’m glad I did. I wouldn’t have met Deidre if I hadn’t.”

Eduardo picks up a piece of orange chicken with chopsticks. “Dude,” he says, brandishing it at Max. “That’s nuts. You’re gonna be a dad.”

Max grins. “I know, right?”

Privately, Eduardo shudders.

 

Tan visits him in March, in time for his birthday. She’s in her neutral form, in jeans and a button down shirt with a camel colored coat thrown over the ensemble. Eduardo finds her lingering outside of his building, smoking a cigarette, heeled feet crossed.

“Hello,” he says, pushing open the glass door. His coat is slung over one arm. “Where have you been?”

Tan smiles and hugs him, and there’s a buzzing beneath her skin that almost vanishes the longer he touches her, but comes back when he begins to lean away.

“Oh,” she says, blowing a smoke ring. “I’ve been around.”

“Those’ll give you cancer,” Eduardo says, more for the benefit of anyone around and listening then for Tan’s and she laughs.

He’s missed her.

“C’mon,” she says, linking her arm with his. “Walk with me.”

He obeys, and for a minute they are blissfully uninterrupted, the crowds of rush hour New York parting around them.

“How have you been?” Tan asks, leading him into a Starbucks. “I want a coffee.”

“I’ve been okay,” Eduardo says, and it’s not a lie. The last time Tan saw him he had a lacerated finger and was passed out in his entry way. He thinks anything is an improvement after that. “I have a job. I got a plant.”

“Really?” Tan raises her eyebrows, smiling. “What a kind?” It’s her turn to order. “Grande Vanilla Latte.”

“A succulent. A hen and chicken plant, is what the guy selling it told me.”

“Ohh,” Tan nods. “Go get us some chairs, I’ll only be a second.”

Eduardo obeys. This time of day, most people go to dinner, not to Starbucks, so the cushy chairs near the windows are free. He secures two, throwing his coat over one for Tan, and glances out the window.

There’s a tall dark skinned woman standing outside, waiting on the corner to cross the street. She’s wearing a dress of bright blue, and has an elaborate hat made out of the same fabric. It’s sort of a cross between the big hats ladies wear at the Kentucky Derby and a turban. One of Eduardo’s history professors had worn one, had called it a Gele.

The woman glances back and sees him watching her, and smiles, just as Tan arrives with her drink.

Everything slows down. Eduardo, staring out the window, swears the woman looks familiar. For a minute he doesn’t see her at all; he sees Erica, eyes twinkling and cheeks dimpling. And then she is gone, and the strange woman is back.

“Tan?” He asks, voice rising uncertainly. He tears his eyes away from the woman to look to his left, where Tan is.

She is stock still, coffee steaming in one hand, the other hand pressed against the glass. In a wave, or a salute, or a come no closer gesture. He can’t figure out which.

As he watches, the woman raises her hand and returns the gesture, holding it for a long breath.

Eduardo’s heart sounds loud in his ears.

The crosswalk light changes, and the woman disappears in a flood of people. By the time everyone has crossed the street, she’s gone, and not even her gele helps her stand out in the crowd.

“Tan.” Eduardo repeats, and this time she looks at him. “Who was that?”

Tan isn’t smiling. “That,” she says, very slowly, voice rocky, “was God.”

 

March passes into April. Tan visits again, bringing a huge potted palm, and helps Eduardo move his succulent plant and the palm out onto the balcony. She doesn’t stay long.

Preeta calls in early April, explaining Divya is back in New York for a while – he had been on a business trip for some time – and could they please, please hang out?

Of course.

That’s how Eduardo found himself waiting for them in Central Park on a Saturday, wearing jeans and a button down and trying not to look as out of place as he felt.

Divya spots him before Preeta does – they have known each other longer, after all – but doesn’t say anything.

Preeta tackles him and Eduardo lets her. She’s 120 pounds of indian ex-ballerina and infectious joy and he’s never happier than when he’s catching her and lowering her back to earth.

“Wardo!” She’s laughing, and he doesn’t even wince at the name. Maybe the rest of his life is like this, maybe he’ll get his nickname back. “Wow, it’s been too long!” She turns. “This is Divya. Divya, this is Eduardo. I know you guys already know each other, but,” she shrugs, tosses her hair. “I think a new leaf is in order.”

Divya smiles and extends his hand, but his eyes are hard and his handshake is crushing. Eduardo shakes it and tries not to grunt.

“Good to see you again,” he says, and Divya inclines his head.

They walk, Preeta between them and chatting with Eduardo about his life, and Max, and his plants. And then she has to use the restroom and she’s dashing off to deli across the street, and Divya turns to Eduardo.

“Preeta really likes you,” he says bluntly. Divya has always been like this, someone who cuts to the chase, who isn’t afraid to stick a knife in you when you’re down. He’s honorable to those who deserve it, and once you don’t, he’ll make you suffer. “So, I figure we need to get along.”

“What do you want, Div?” Eduardo asks, but he knows. Has always known. “I didn’t know, Divya. I didn’t know til we got your letter of intent to sue. Mark didn’t tell me anything – isn’t it obvious?” He laughs. It sounds like breaking glass. “I’m not a thief. I don’t cheat. I’m sorry that it happened at all.”

Divya is studying him, face unreadable.

“I love Preeta. She’s – wonderful. I want her to be happy. I want to be in her life. I don’t want Facebook to ruin that.”

Not this, too, he thinks. I won’t let Facebook ruin this, like everything else.

Divya relaxes. “I always liked you,” he confesses, and he’s smiling crookedly, all temper gone. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem, do you?”

“No,” Eduardo says. They shake hands again, and this time it’s not painful. It’s just an acknowledgment. An agreement between equals.

Preeta returns, sporting a bottle of water. You can’t ask to use the restroom in a shop in New York, you have to buy something first. “Ah,” she says, fuschia lips twisted into a smile. “Glad you boys made up. C’mon. The BBQ truck is like two blocks away.”

Later, when Divya is arguing with the cashier about – something, Eduardo can’t quite make out what – Preeta sidles over to him.

“Are you guys going to get married?” Eduardo asks. Maybe Divya’s bluntness has rubbed off on him. Or maybe this is just blindingly obvious.

Preeta smiles. “Probably,” she says. “I don’t date just anyone.”

“He’s a good guy,” Eduardo tells her, shifting his bbq chicken sandwich from one hand to the other so he can hug her.

“Oh, it won’t happen for a while,” Preeta says, hugging him back. She has to go up on her tip toes to do so. “He hasn’t even proposed yet, calm down. Don’t get sentimental on me. Besides,” she pauses, “we should find you someone too.”

“No,” Eduardo says, trying to sink iron into his voice. “Absolutely not. Get me a plant or something, not a boyfriend.”

“Hmm,” Preeta says, dismissing his opinion, but then Divya rejoins them and she shuts up.

 

A week later, a dwarf Japanese maple is delivered to Eduardo’s apartment. When he calls up Preeta she spends the entirety of the phone call laughing at him.

 

*

 

Eduardo can’t remember most of May to July. He goes to work, he talks to Max, he waters his plants, he cooks a little in his shiny kitchen. The Housing Bubble bursts. He sees Preeta and Divya. He avoids taking calls from his parents. He doesn’t drink. He is miserable.

The words of the nurse at the ER, Maria, keep echoing around in his head at night, when he is lonely in his empty bed and paralyzed by misery.

You’re a long way from home.

He’s never felt like he’s had a home, exactly. Childhood memories of Brazil are distorted by the fear of his father’s fist and the unknown gang members threatening to take him away. Miami was…brief, he went to boarding school so early. When he did return it was sex, alcohol, and flashing lights of clubs. He didn’t want to be at home, he didn’t even want to be in his own skin. So he tried to opt out as much as possible.

And Harvard…was where he began to build something, with Mark and Dustin and Chris. With the Young Investor’s Club. With AEPi. With Facebook. And then –

He is so tired of rehashing it in his head, of trying to go over it again and again and again. But he feels robbed of not just Facebook, not just Mark, but of his friends. Dustin never called. Chris is – a demon. Is not what or who Eduardo thought he was. And after being made the laughing stock of the business world, Eduardo had snuck around Harvard until graduation.

It hurt, still hurts, something that has healed over but still aches, especially in the cold.

What amazes him about Preeta, and Divya, is that they are so connected to their culture and families. That the neighborhood Preeta has lived her entire life is mostly Punjabi Indians, and they’re all Hindu.

Eduardo cannot remember having that, cannot remember consciously needing that. The pieces of him that he has divided into identities no longer make any sense to him. He doesn’t know how to explain it. He doesn’t know how to talk about it.

 

Tan visits him in August, appearing on his balcony. He keeps collecting plants; orchids, the dwarf Japanese maple from Preeta, succulents, Tan's palm, and a Japanese peace lily Max got him as a joke. He said it was a movie reference, but Eduardo still doesn’t understand it.

Tan is holding a cactus. “This is from Chris,” she explains. It was sporting bright pink flowers like several very gaudy hats. “It’s a hedgehog cactus.”

“Oh,” Eduardo says, stepping out onto the balcony and taking the plant from her by its dish. “Thank you. I’m assuming it likes sunlight?”

Tan nods and Eduardo arranges it so it’s with the other succulents, on a ladder shelf he bought especially for his plants. He was thinking of growing vegetables, like cucumbers or tomatoes or peas, but never got around to it, and now the season is almost over.

“What’s up, Eduardo?” Tan asks. She says his name with a Portuguese accent, the way he almost never hears it said and he collapses into himself like a deflating accordion; she comes up to her and wraps her arms around him.

She’s Japanese today, with short black hair and a lip ring but she’s able to bear his weight and rub his back, and for a small while, he lets her.

“Come on,” she says, gentle, soothing. “Let’s go inside.”

They sit on his couch. Eduardo hugs a pillow and Tan watches him carefully.

“How is Chris?” He asks finally, when he no longer feels like he is leaking all over the upholstery and Tan smiles.

“He is well. Very interested in the new senator that’s making a play for the presidency.”

“Oh…Obama, right?”

Tan nods. “What about you?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

“I just…” Eduardo gestures sort of haphazardly. “I don’t know…” He swallows. “I don’t feel connected to anything that…that I am. Any parts of my identity. And I don’t know how to…reconnect.”

“Well,” Tan says, not looking at him. “You can’t go into a Temple. They’re built on holy ground, they don’t permit the soulless to enter.” She has the grace to be matter a-fact instead of falsely ashamed. The devil is never ashamed of taking souls. “And I can’t imagine you’d want to reconnect with any community that knows your parents or holds them in high esteem.”

Eduardo nods. “I’d like to stay as far away as possible, actually.” He fidgets. “I thought I had found that with Harvard, but…”

“You need to stop acting like Harvard is the end of the world,” Tan says it so gently he doesn’t bother to get mad at her. “Look, you’re here now.”

“You must think I’m pathetic.” Eduardo laughs, the syllables brittle.

“No,” Tan says, leaning forward and grabbing his hands. “Not at all. I think you are wonderful. You are my friend, Eduardo.”

“You aren’t –”

“No, I’m not just saying that,” she scoffs. “I mean it, of course I mean it, why would I lie?”

He fidgets again. “I’m trying,” he admits. “I’m trying here.”

“You’re doing good,” she tells him. “I know it’s hard. But – you remember what you said to me? About not making people the center of your life?”

He nods.

“You have a shitty family. You had a shitty friend and business partner. You have to make yourself a new family, with new friends.”

“It’s hard,” Eduardo snaps, and he doesn’t know why he’s so upset. “I just – don’t want to get hurt again. Don’t want to be alone again. But I also just want everyone to leave me alone. I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should go to therapy,” Tan suggests delicately. Eduardo shakes his head.

“I’ll figure it out,” he sighs. “I will. I just – it hurts, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

Tan kisses his forehead. “Darling,” her voice is full of tenderness. “you are the most precious, most amazing thing I have ever seen.”

“Oh,” Eduardo flushes, his voice wobbling. “I love you too.”

 

So – he builds. He asks Max to hang out, which ends up with him coming over for dinner and meeting Deidre and the tiny, bundled up Helena.

Eduardo spends most of the time holding Helena and whispering all of his answers to Deidre and Max’s questions. All of his answers are delayed. Helena is so tiny, so pink and new, barely a month old. She is captivating; he is captivated. Deidre and Max forgive him for being so distracted.

“Look at you,” Max says as he walks Eduardo out of the apartment. Eduardo’s arms feel empty without a baby in them. “Uncle Wardo. Very cool, man. You’re good with babies.”

Eduardo laughs. “Anytime you need a sitter, let me know,” he finds himself offering without actually meaning too. But he means it. “I love babies.”

Max claps him on the shoulder. “I’ll keep that in mind. See you on Monday.”

“See you!”

 

He makes an effort to see Preeta every week. They go to brunch on Sunday, drink mimosas and gossip about everyone and everything in their lives. Sometimes Divya attends, sometimes he doesn’t. He flies all around the world for business, and spends time upstate watching his friends, the Winklevii, train.

“I’ve met them, you know,” Preeta says. She’s drinking cranberry juice, for some reason. “They’re very nice.”

“They are,” Eduardo allows. “Just – I don’t know. I never really got to know them before everything terrible went down.”

“We should all get dinner,” Preeta says, hands already flying over the keys of her blackberry. “Something protein heavy. They’re in training for the Olympics.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Eduardo says, taking a bite of a croissant. “That’s next August, in China. Shit.”

“I know, right?” Preeta rolls her eyes. “I can’t even imagine.”

 

September comes. Eduardo forgets to be nostalgic about school because he is so busy. At work, the stock market trends are beginning to be alarming. He spends too much time on the phone instructing people not to give out home loans, while Max types up memos.

(“Too many people buying homes they can’t afford in Florida,” Max mutters. His under eye circles are so deep it’s almost cartoonish. “Where is the money for this coming from?”

“It doesn’t exist,” Eduardo answers absently, covering the mouthpiece of his phone. He’s on hold, again.)

His parents keep calling, keep asking when he’ll be home for Thanksgiving even though it’s two months away. Eduardo doesn’t know how to explain that. He won’t know until the week before, mostly likely.

And, to top everything off, Divya comes back into town and brings the Winklevii, and Preeta asks, very nicely, if they could pretty please have dinner at Eduardo’s house?

Which is how at the end of September, Eduardo sets the table with the fancy dining ware his parents bought him, then rushes back to his kitchen to check on the chicken he’s roasting.

(Deidre gave him a recipe. He had mentioned wanting to make protein, and she had originally suggested steak, but when he had explained two of his guests were Hindu and didn’t eat steak, she had suggested a roast chicken with vegetables.

“Here,” she had said, passing him Helena, “let me write down my recipe for you. It’s impossible to go wrong.”)

He’s got thirty minutes to go on the bird when the doorbell rings. He trips over his own carpet on his way to answer it, yelps, catches himself, straightens, and opens the door.

Preeta is there, looking amused, her red lipstick matching her bindi. Behind her are the Winklevii – huge, blond, muscular, and holding plants.

What.

“Oh, my god,” Eduardo mutters. “Hi, hello. Welcome.”

Preeta scoots around him so he’s talking directly to the Winklevii.

“These are for you,” one of them says. Cameron? Tyler?

“You really didn’t have to do that,” Eduardo says helplessly, allowing the speaker to deposit a flowerpot into his hands. “Please, come in.”

He stands back and lets the Winklevii, and Divya (hidden until now by the enormous twins) into his apartment. The twin still holding a plant – it’s a rosemary plant, Eduardo’s nose informs him, and the one he’s holding is a basil plant – hovers uncertainly. It occurs to Eduardo they’re just as nervous as he is.

“Would you like to see my plant collection?” Eduardo asks the twins, and they nod eagerly.

He leads them over to his balcony, unlatching the sliding door and pushing it open. This late, the city is lit up and the balcony is half illuminated. He flicks on the light so they can see it better.

“Wow,” Divya says. “I had no idea.”

It is a bit of a collection – succulents, the dwarf Japanese maple tree, the palm from Tan, the Japanese peace lily, orchids, a hydrangea Eduardo had snagged two weeks earlier, some hanging baskets. The cactus from Chris.

“I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to be invited to your house,” Preeta sniffs, inspecting the orchids with gentle fingers.

The twins are smiling.

“Where do you want me to put this?” The twin with the rosemary plant asks. Eduardo sets down the basil near the hydrangea and the twin copies him.

“You’ve got a green thumb.” Divya says, still marveling at the balcony. “This is incredible.”

Eduardo laughs. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I like coming home to them – my plants. Geez, how lame does that sound?”

“It doesn’t sound lame at all, give yourself a break,” Preeta scolds.

They file back into Eduardo’s apartment. Preeta entertains the twins while Divya helps Eduardo in the kitchen.

“Don’t let Preeta near here,” Divya instructs in an undertone as the timer for the chicken goes off. “She has the magical power of burning absolutely everything.”

“I heard that!” Preeta calls, but she’s laughing.

Eduardo pulls the chicken out of the oven and hoists it onto the stove top. Divya sticks a meat thermometer unceremoniously into it’s thigh and pronounces it done.

“Do I smell roast potatoes?” One of the twins asks.

“Yeah,” Eduardo calls back. “Red fingerlings.” He makes a face. “That sounds so dirty.”

Divya, about to carve the chicken, cracks up, and dinner is delayed by about ten minutes because every time Divya tries to pull himself together he starts laughing all over again.

All in all, it goes well.

Divya must have explained to the twins everything Eduardo told him, because the only awkwardness in the conversation is from Eduardo. The twins are polite, funny, laugh at Eduardo’s jokes (mostly borrowed from Max) and have second and thirds. Preeta and Divya exchange a lot of couples’ looks, where they talk with their eyes and look away and smile, and Eduardo allows himself to relax.

“This is really good,” one of the twins says. He indicates his twin. “Cameron’s favorite food is chicken.”

Cameron smiles. “And Tyler’s favorite food is potatoes, so you got us covered.”

Eduardo knows the second they walk out that door he isn’t going to be able to tell them apart, but that’s alright.

“Glad it worked out,” he says, smiling. “A friend of mine gave me the recipe. She says it’s foolproof.”

“Oh,” Preeta says. “I want it, then.”

Divya cracks up again and can’t stop, even when Preeta throws a potato at him and hits him in the nose.

The twins have to go to sleep early, and Preeta and Divya want to go out, so after dinner everyone helps Eduardo clean up and then they leave. The twins shake Eduardo’s hands and thank him; he wishes them luck in rowing. Divya hugs him and claps him on the back. Preeta draws him close and kisses him on the cheek, and then everyone is gone, and he’s alone with his plants.

“I think that went well,” Eduardo says to his empty apartment.

Nobody answers. Eduardo thinks that’s a good thing.

 

*

 

His Mãe successfully guilt trips him into coming home for Thanksgiving. Eduardo goes. He talks more and drinks less this time, talks his aunt and uncle out of buying another house, talks his cousin out of taking out a loan to buy a car. There’s a bad market coming he repeats. The trends aren’t good. We’re heading towards a recession.

His dad nods approvingly at him and Eduardo abruptly stops talking. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He gets himself a drink and doesn’t look back.

 

*

 

 

He brought in most of his plants due to the cold snap and they take up most of his table. He doesn’t mind. The only plant still on the floor is Hector, the dwarf Japanese maple.

(Divya had named him.)

Now, Eduardo takes home reports and finishes them at his kitchen table, surrounded by his plants. Deidre, who paints, gave him a painting when he had her and Max and Helena over for dinner, and he hangs it up in his kitchen. He’s surrounded by things he love, and they help with his work.

His work is still depressing, is getting worse. The bank officials aren’t listening to him and Max. He can only pray other branches are listening to their economists. If they aren’t, he’ll be out of a job soon because there won’t be a WaMu.

 

December skips by. Eduardo goes ice skating with Preeta again, except Divya comes along. He and Eduardo end up holding hands and skating around the rink slowly while Preeta speeds by, long hair streaming out behind her.

“Absurd,” Eduardo says, breath producing white plumes of air.

“Ridiculous,” Divya agrees, clinging to the railing. “I hate doing this. It’s so stupid.”

“She used to, like, do it as a sport,” Eduardo doesn’t know how to talk. He’s so cold. It’s amazing that he’s still upright.

“I know, I saw her compete a couple times,” Divya admits. “My aunty Bhuvi, my mother’s sister, would take me to see her skate, and dance. She wanted to be a ballerina, you know.”

“What happened?” Eduardo asks, watching Preeta spin across the ice.

“She ruptured her Achilles’s tendon.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Divya agrees. “No more dancing, at least not professionally. She’s okay now, but…it’s never gonna be the same, you know?” He lets go of the railing carefully. “It was very hard for her, for her family. My family supported hers a lot during that time.”

Eduardo squeezes his hand. “That was good of you.”

Divya shrugs. “We stick together, you know? Family once, family forever. And now,” he focuses on Eduardo, “that extends to you, my man. You’re family now, alright?”

Eduardo swallows.

Divya waves a hand at the giant Christmas tree. “If you tear up, I’ll understand it’s because you’re allergic to white people’s holidays, don’t worry.”

“You’re the best, Div.”

Divya grins. It’s a shark’s smile. “I know it. C’mon. Where’d Preeta get too?”

 

On News Years Eve, Eduardo agrees to watch Helena, because Max and Deidre’s sitter had bailed last minute. So he ends up watching the ball drop alone in their house, nursing a glass of sparkling cider and holding a sleeping Helena.

She fussed too much when she slept in the crib alone, and he was tired of standing over the crib and watching her sleep like a creeper.

“3, 2, 1…HAPPY NEW YEAR!” The subtitles on the TV do their best to scream silently. Eduardo picks up his cider with one hand and treat the TV to a sardonic salute.

“How ‘bout that?” he asks Helena. Asleep, she blows a spit bubble at him.

“My thoughts exactly,” he agrees.

 

*

 

2008

 

In early January, Divya comes to see Eduardo during lunch, at work. Max takes one look at Divya’s serious face and leaves, grabbing his jacket off of the back of his chair.

“Text me when you’re done, dude,” he tells Eduardo, who nods. Divya lets himself in and perches on the edge of Eduardo’s desk, something Preeta used to do. His hands are folded in his lap. Eduardo is suddenly, abruptly nervous.

“We’re suing Mark,” he says without preamble. “Tyler, Cameron, and I.” He pauses. “Our lawyer told us someone else is also suing Mark. Would I be correct in thinking it’s you?”

“It is,” Eduardo’s throat is suddenly dry. “But – it’s on hold. Because of your lawsuit, I guess.”

Divya inclines his head.

“Our lawyer is telling us it’s likely you’ll be called to testify against us.”

“I haven’t,” Eduardo says immediately. “I haven’t spoken to Mark in…years.”

“It wouldn’t be Mark, it would be his lawyers.”

“No one has contacted me.” And as soon as he says it, Eduardo knows this is because of Chris. Chris has convinced Mark, Dustin, hell probably the whole damn law firm Facebook hired not to contact Eduardo.

He loves Chris, he really does. He owes Chris.

“You want to be kept out of it, don’t you?” Divya asks and Eduardo nods. He isn’t even sure he wants to keep suing Mark. He did it out of a sort of knee-jerk reaction, I’m Going To Get What’s Mine. I’m Coming Back For Everything. But now, he’s tired, and he wants to be left alone. He wants to forget it even happened.

“I’ll do my best to make sure that happens,” Divya is saying, dark eyes serious. “You don’t need to be involved any more than you already are.”

“Thank you,” Eduardo says. He knows if Divya were a lesser man they wouldn’t be friends, wouldn’t be able to get over this but they have and they are.

Divya puts a hand on Eduardo’s shoulder and Eduardo leans into it for half a second.

“C’mon,” Divya says, moving away. “Text your office husband that it’s all clear and then let’s go get lunch. I’m thinking pizza.”

 

Later that day, Eduardo goes to Whole Foods and buys another succulent. This time it’s a rosette with smaller leaves then his hen and chicken plant.

His cashier is North again. This is very comforting, for some reason.

“Oh, a hen and chick!” He says, scanning the pot.

“No,” Eduardo objects. “This one has smaller leaves.”

“Hen and chick plants are a group of plants, not a proper name. This one is a Carmen. The other you have is probably a Tectorum.”

“Oh.” Eduardo frowns. He pays with his card, pressing in his pin. “Thank you.”

Tan is waiting for him outside the store. She’s Japanese again, but has traded her lip ring for a septum piercing.

“Did you know that hen and chicken plants are a group of plants, not a proper name for one plant?” Eduardo asks her in lieu of greeting. “I feel lied too. I thought it was a name this entire time.”

“Another succulent?” Tan asks, peering down at the pot in his hands. “You have a problem.”

Eduardo shrugs. “This one is a Carmen. The other is probably a Tectorum.”

“You’re going to be up all night researching succulents, aren’t you?”

“Hush,” Eduardo snaps, but he’s laughing. “My plants and I are gonna take over the world.”

They walk home together. Eduardo has given up trying to find his Northface and wears his pea coat everywhere. Tan is wearing the same camel colored coat she wore when they saw God.

“How have you been?” Tan asks.

“Good,” Eduardo admits, surprising himself with how much he means it. “I’ve been good. I’m making friends. Learning how to cook.”

“How’s the finger?”

“Good, see?” He shifts the pot from hand to hand so he can show her. “Apparently I owe Chris a fruit basket or something.”

“Hmm?” Tan asks as they cross the street.

“I’m pretty sure he’s convinced Mark’s lawyers not to call me to act as a witness in the Divya-Winklevii lawsuit.”

“Oh,” Tan nods. “That sounds like him.”

She walks him to his building and, in a rare display of affection, kisses him on the forehead. “You’re doing so well, Eduardo,” she says. He can’t look at her eyes for too long; he’ll drown. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs, but she’s already gone.

 

2008 speeds by. He babysits Helena on Valentine’s Day; she’s getting really big, though still under a year old, and she falls asleep on his chest while he watches 10 Things I Hate About You and resolutely does not think about Mark. Max and Deidre’s soft laughter actually wakes her up, and between everyone’s smiles and the free chocolate, Eduardo forgets to be sad.

 

In mid March, during brunch, Preeta focuses on him so fully that Eduardo looks sadly down at his cantaloupe before setting down his knife and fork.

“Yes?” he prompts, when it becomes clear that Preeta isn’t going to say anything.

“I was wondering,” she says, running a finger around the rim of her mimosa, “if you wanted to celebrate Holi with my family and I.”

“What is Holi?” Eduardo’s mouth asks while he panics.

“It’s a Hindu festival,” Preeta replies. “It’s like…the festival of colors, or the festival of love. It celebrates friendship and spring.” She’s not looking at him.

“Oh,” Eduardo says, who is thinking about family and building family and friendship. “Of course, Preeta. I’d love too.”

Preeta smiles down at her food, then looks up at him. “I’m so glad,” she says. “It’s really…you’re family now. And my parents would love to meet you.”

His experience of families have been raised fist and polite smiles and Eduardo sweats, even as he nods. “I’d love to meet them,” he says, and tries to mean it. “When is it?”

“The 21st and 22nd of this month,” Preeta takes a sip of her mimosa. “You’d come for the part on Saturday.”

“Oh, okay,” Eduardo says. “Yeah. Just tell me what to do, what to wear, and I’ll do it. I’ll be there.”

Preeta beams at him.

 

She tells him to wear stuff he doesn’t mind getting dirty, preferring light colored, so he shows up in jeans and a white t-shirt. The festival is being held in a park in Brooklyn, and he can hear it from blocks away; Indian music, with drums and otherworldly voices.

It looks like the entire Punjabi population of New York City is there, all smeared with bright colors. He hangs back on the edges, uncertain of what to do, and then a little girl of no more than five runs up to him and throws bright pink powder at his legs.

“You got me!” Eduardo tells her, and she giggles.

“Eduardo!” Preeta calls over the music. She’s almost unrecognizable, color smeared all over her clothes and face. “You made it!”

“I did!” He agrees, jogging over to her. She immediately slaps green powder onto his chest.

“Here,” she says, fishing in one pocket for a sachet of yellow powder. “This is yours.”

“What do I do?”

“Have fun,” Preeta says, the wild edge of laughter coloring her words. “That’s why I invited you, Eduardo. It’s…to celebrate everything good in the world, and you just…you need to smile and enjoy yourself, okay?”

He doesn’t know how to explain that he’s been trying.

“I know,” Preeta says, even though he hasn’t said anything. “But this will make it a little easier, okay? Just…run around and try to get as many people as you can. It’s a festival, it’s a party.”

“Okay,” Eduardo agrees, and dumps half of his sachet on her head and runs away, giggling. Preeta, shrieking, sprints after him.

It becomes a giant game of tag with everyone there. Eduardo plays mostly with the kids, pretending to run away from them while really letting them catch him and throw powder at him. He’s a rainbow in no time. Preeta sneaks up to him and gets him back, rubbing half of his face with blue. Divya comes out of nowhere and does the other half with purple at the same time and Eduardo, laughing, collapses, Preeta and Divya falling down on top of him. The kids, led by the little girl Eduardo first met, dog pile onto them until Eduardo can’t breath.

He feels, in that moment, his heart crack open – the goodness of the world, the brightness of spring, the laughter of children making him understand why he was living. Why he kept going. Why he bought plants, and babysat Helena, and kissed Preeta’s cheek whenever they said goodbye. Why he covered Mark with blankets whenever he fell asleep at his computer, why he made Dustin ramen when he was sick, why he shared his notes with Chris before tests. Why he brushed Christy’s hair back from her face.

Why he knew Tan in all of her forms.

“Eduardo,” Divya says, laughing, and runs his powdery fingers through Eduardo’s hair, messing it up further. “You look like a wild man.”

“I feel wild,” Eduardo answers, breathless and smiling. “I feel…”

“I know,” Divya answers, and grips Eduardo’s arm. “I know, Eduardo.”

 

He walks with them back to Preeta’s family’s house. Divya peels off with his own family, and Eduardo is sandwiched between Preeta’s mother and her father, both of whom are shorter than him, though her father is only a few inches shorter.

“You are a good man,” her father tells him. “Preeta has told us lots about you.”

“The way you played with the children,” her mother says. “You will make a good father.”

“Mai!” Preeta says hurriedly. “Please stop bugging Eduardo. He’s probably overwhelmed.”

“I’m okay,” Eduardo says, and he means it.

 

*

 

In June, Helena has her 1st birthday. Eduardo watches her while Deidre bakes the cake. There are three other one year olds over, and they giggle and crawl around the apartment as fast as they can. Helena has a tiny afro to match Deidre’s, but doesn’t care for her dress. It’s rucked up above her diaper as she motors around on the carpet.

“How unladylike,” Eduardo scolds her, and Helena screeches with laughter.

“You should be a full time nanny,” Deidre says, stirring the batter. “The manny.”

One of the moms of the one year olds nods. “You could have your own show. TLC loves that stuff.”

Max, looking harried, appears from his and Deidre’s bedroom, which has been partially converted into his office.

“Hiya,” he says, brushing his hair out of his eyes and scooping Helena off of the floor.

“Hey,” Eduardo says.

“Hi, baby,” Deidre says.

The moms chorus their hellos.

“Just got off the phone with an economist from the Rhode Island branch,” Max says, setting Helena down and walking over to sit by Eduardo. “They report that the market is looking up.”

“Yeah,” Eduardo nods and sips his water. “So far it’s a temporary trend, but it’s holding.”

“If it holds, the recession might be milder than we thought.”

“Only if people stop giving out so many loans,” Eduardo mutters. “And we’re having a good month. We’d need to have a good year.”

“Enough work talk!” Deidre snaps. The cake is in the oven now. “Tell me, Eduardo. Are you having a good year?”

 

He is.

That’s the thing. As summer skips along and IndyMac collapses, Eduardo has a good year. He gets together with Divya and Preeta and both Divya’s family and Preeta’s family to watch Tyler and Cameron compete in the Olympics. It is…depressing, to watch them fail to qualify in the first heat, then to qualify in the Repechage, then to advance to semifinals, qualify for the final, only to finish sixth out of fourteenth. Their frustration is palpable through the screen, even though the twins are in Beijing and Eduardo is watching from New York.

Cameron calls Divya briefly after Divya texts him to say he saw the race, and Divya passes the phone to Preeta and then to Eduardo.

“I’m so sorry,” Eduardo says. It’s a shit connection but he thinks he can still hear the frustration in each breath Cameron takes. “You guys were amazing. You gave a phenomenal effort. I hope you know that.”

“Thanks, Eduardo,” Cameron says after a beat. “We appreciate that.”

“Anytime,” Eduardo says, and gives the phone back to Divya.

 

In September, Eduardo buys a car.

It’s stupid, really, but he wants something to talk about this Thanksgiving, wants something to get his parents off his back. And then, horribly, a letter had come in from his lawyer, Gretchen, about the depositions. About how they’re moving forward, now that the other lawsuit is finally happening, and how they could start deposing at the end of November, and isn’t that great news?

“What do you want?” the car dealer asks Eduardo, and Eduardo thinks, I don’t know. He thinks, I have no fucking idea. He says: “something that’s good on ice.”

(He brought in his plants yesterday, because of an early cold snap. He wasn’t taking any chances.)

He ends up picking out a black 2009 Audi A4. He puts it on hold, leaves to go to the bank, and then comes back and pays cash for the car in full.

The salesperson doesn’t even blink. He probably sees this all the time. Eduardo doesn’t care. He has a car, and he feels like a fucking grown up in it.

He drives it home and it takes forever because this is New York and no one actually needs a car. But he has one, and it’s paid for in full, and it doesn’t matter that the bottom is almost certainly going to drop out of the market soon. They won’t take his car. He’s having a good year.

 

*

 

And then – and then it all goes to hell.

One minute, Eduardo is watching Obama debate McCain. The next, Max is on the phone with Helena crying in the background saying look at these numbers, look at this, this isn’t going away, I guess you were right when you said it was only temporary.

Eduardo walks to the office; it’s not far. He meets Max there, and they stay and crunch numbers and write up memos and reports and make frantic phone calls and do not go home. They stay there, drinking cup after cup of bad coffee, as the hands chase each other around the clock.

The market is heading towards a steep drop and they’re doing they’re best to slow it down. It is late October. The election is very soon. No one knows what to do.

 

Obama gets elected. He talks a lot about the failing of IndyMac and the fact that America is officially in a recession. People listen and begin to panic. Max and Eduardo raise their eyebrows at one another.

Eduardo goes home for thanksgiving and keeps being asked about the recession and the housing crisis and banks failing and starts drinking to make people leave him alone. No one wants to hear about his new car.

 

He comes back, goes back to work. Leaves to sleep, change his clothes, eat, water his plants. Comes back. Rips pages off of the calendar.

One day he sends Max home to Helena and Deidre and tries to muddle through the numbers himself. There’s a stack of papers thicker than should be allowed on his desk and they don’t make sense.

Because they say WaMu is bankrupt.

And that –

That means everything Eduardo and Max did was for nothing.

 

No matter how many times he crunches and re-crunches the numbers, they stay the same. At one point Eduardo gets up and pours himself a generous glass of scotch, just to see if that will make the numbers better. It doesn’t.

He won’t have a job in the morning. There isn’t going to be a Washington Mutual Bank in the morning.

He has a brand new car sitting in his garage, under his apartment – why get a car in New York, everyone had asked?

Because I want too, Eduardo had said – and the economy is about to take a nosedive so deep it’s going to land them back in the 1930s.

Eduardo stands up, shoving his chair back from his desk. His glass of scotch, now empty, shudders slightly on the desk. He ignores it.

He doesn’t remember the walk from WaMu to his apartment, only remembers climbing into his car and turning it on, backing up and then gunning it, blazing out of the parking garage and down the street. It’s 12:42 AM.

 

It’s slow going, trying to get out of New York, even past midnight. Eduardo chooses the path of least resistance and gets on I-87.

His hands are shaking on the wheel. The night stretches out before him much like the road; his headlights don’t make a dent. He glances at himself in the rearview mirror, sees the bluish display lights of his dash reflected on his skin. He looks like a ghost. He feels like one too.

Manhattan is suddenly behind him. Eduardo doesn’t miss it.

He wonders where Preeta is, if she’s with Divya, if they know yet. If they know that tomorrow they all might not have jobs, that this is a huge waste of time. He wonders about Ola, if she’s holding her head in her hands and wondering where to go from here. He wonders about Max and Deidre and little Helena, if they’re panicking yet, if Helena is sleeping through it.

 

At some point he heads into New Jersey, slowing down only to pay tolls. He feels claustrophobic, speeds more than necessary and pays another toll, later, on a different road, to return to New York.

He doesn’t talk more than he needs too. Two hours ago he had three fingers of scotch. He shouldn’t be behind the wheel at all. It is – and Eduardo can hear his father, sneering the word – irresponsible.

It is, Tan whispers in the back of his head, dangerous.

Shut the fuck up, Eduardo thinks at them both, and they quiet.

 

He passes White Plains sometime later, and then Dobbs Ferry, and wonders about Mark. About Facebook, about Chris, about Dustin. Oh, but they’ll be okay. Facebook doesn’t depend on the recession. They haven’t even had to open the stock up to the public yet.

Mark will be fine. He always fucking is.

And me? Eduardo asks, stomping on the brake and twisting the wheel so he can take an exit. He doesn’t know where he’s going. Maybe that’s the point.

 

The exit spits him out onto Albany. Eduardo keeps driving. The town is quiet; his dashboard clock says 3:02 AM.

A sign informs him to take this road to head towards the mountains and Eduardo obeys.

The scotch is no longer heavy in his brain. Eduardo can feel himself coming out of it, even as he leaves the city behind. Dark trees line the road, tall and ominous, blocking out the even darker sky. His hands are still shaking on the wheel, on the gearshift.

He turns right at random; the scene informs him this is a scenic route. For a minute, the view opens up. For a minute, he catches sight of the mountains, impossible and looming.

Mark was like that. A challenge. Something unknowable. And Eduardo had – had wanted, so much. Was it selfish, to want another person? To want to know something unknowable? To want to matter?

 

He hits a point where there’s snow on the ground and the road, his wheels slipping on ice, and Eduardo twists the steering wheel savagely and keeps going, stabbing the 4 wheel drive button with one shaking finger.

The trees around him are weighed down by snow and the road is sloping up, jagged rock on either side.

What the fuck are you doing with your life, Eduardo? He asks himself, speeding up and angling his body as he sped around a sharp turn. He’s close to the mountains now; it’s almost 4 AM and he is so tired. There is so much ice on the road. It glitters in his headlights.

Nothing. Nothing worthwhile, Eduardo thinks. Then: I’m running again, like I always do.

“Then stop,” he says out loud, voice deafening in the enclosed space. “Then fucking stop. Fix it.”

How? He asks himself. The road is opening up now and the mountains are in front of him, dark shadows against the barely lighter sky. How do I fix it?

Then: Why? Why even bother?

It’s so fucking unfair and Eduardo slams his gas pedal down, because why would he fix it? His father, saying why would I be proud of such an idiot? Mark, saying You're gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?

His jobs always ending with a bone snapping finality; Facebook, Blackstone, and now, WaMu.

The people he loves, never loving him back. The people he loves, hurting him, and him loving them anyway.

Why even bother? He thinks again.

 

The world…stops. The steering wheel turns and the car veers off the road sharply. There’s a tree dead ahead, something big and solid, dark like a target amidst the snow. He glances at the speedometer: 65 mph.

He takes his foot off the gas pedal. He takes his hands off the steering wheel.

He breathes.


	3. Chapter 3

He is very, very cold.

“Eduardo,” Chris’s voice says, as if from far away. “Eduardo. Get up.”

Eduardo opens his eyes.

He’s lying in the snow, one cheek pressed against the snow. Chris is crouching next to him, wearing a pea coat, jeans, and heavy boots.

“Get up,” Chris says again, and Eduardo looks at him, at his face.

Chris isn’t the same as he was in Facebook, or Harvard, or even New York last year. His eyes are black without any white showing, and he’s thinner and paler, skin drawn more tightly over the bones of his face.

Eduardo obeys.

He’s in a suit – he vaguely remembers wearing this suit, remembers putting it on, tying the knot in his tie. It’s a two thousand dollar wool suit made by Armani. It’s doing absolutely nothing to keep him warm.

Chris reaches out and touches a rip in Eduardo’s left sleeve, right below his shoulder. His face is still; he is looking at Eduardo with a sort of clinical interest, like Eduardo is something small and scaly that lives in a cage.

Eduardo looks down at himself. His shirt is ripped in the front, a long slash in the silk, and the bottom part of his tie is missing. His shoes are missing; his socks, mere cotton, are already soaked.

He is so, so cold.

“Chris?” His teeth are already starting to chatter. Chris looks at him, warm in his pea coat. It’s blue, blue like his eyes usually are. “Where are we?”

For a minute, Chris’s blank expression flickers, and with it, comes memory.

The car, drifting off the road and plowing through the snow; the desire to be far, far away from anything or anyone he knew; the endless wilderness of the Adirondacks.

This does not look like the Adirondacks.

“It looks….like the forest of my village, in Italy.”  Chris’s voice is so human, so at odds with his impassive face and black eyes. But as he looks around, his expression cracks, and he turns slowly to take it all in.

They’re in a clearing ringed with evergreen trees, snowy heavy on every bough, snow covering the ground. The sky is as white as the snow, so Eduardo cannot tell where it ends and the ground begins; the only sources of color are the green of the trees, the blue of Chris’s jacket and the pale gold of his hair.

The snow is burning the soles of his feet and Eduardo hunches, peering at Chris who is finally looking back at him.

For a minute the cold falls away and Eduardo watches snow fall into Chris’s hair, meets those utterly black eyes with his own.

“You never went back?” he asks, curling his toes in his sodden socks, and half of Chris’s mouth curves in a smile so false it doesn’t look like a smile at all.

“No,” he replies. “How could I? I was dead, and after…it’s all past, now. Like it doesn’t exist. Like there’s a new Sondrio.”

And fuck, Eduardo knows – how can he return to Palo Alto, to Harvard, to Brazil? He has a problem of associating the people with the places, making them the same and maybe he has been running his entire life. A wounded animal, dragging itself away, away, away.

“Is that where we are now?” he asks, to distract himself. There’s snowflakes sticking to the skin of the back of his neck, sandwiched by his shirt collar. He shudders.

“No,” Chris responds, slowly. Then, his eyes lingering on the tears in Eduardo’s shirt, in his suit jacket, he asks: “Are you alright?”

Eduardo thinks of letting his car drift off the road and plough at sixty-five miles per hour at a tree, thinks of the consequences of his actions, thinks of what that means. He thinks about the word suicide. He smiles at Chris. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

 

They begin to walk, Chris leading. He goes confidently to the left, through the trees and Eduardo, shivering, follows him.

“Where are we going?” he asks. The snow is high here, and fresh; Chris wades through it easily and Eduardo follows, stepping only in the trenches Chris creates. The snow comes up to his knees, easily. He’s so fucking glad this suit is wool.

Chris looks at him from over his shoulder, black eyes narrowed and hair glinting in the harsh light.

“To see Tan.” He replies, looking away again. Eduardo struggles to keep up, shivering, hands balled into fists and stuffed into his pockets.

“How long?” he can’t help but ask, cringing.

Chris doesn’t even look at him this time. “Not long,” he replies. “It’s not far.”

 

They keep walking. After a few minutes, Eduardo checks his watch; it’s stopped working, all three hands frozen on the six.

In front of him, Chris pauses, slipping but not falling. It’s like watching the world itself glitch; instead of pin wheeling his arms for balance, Chris goes sideways at a slant but remains standing, back straight, breathing evening.

“Careful,” he says, glancing back at Eduardo. “There are rocks here. They’re slippery.”

He keeps walking, each step careful and measured and after a minute Eduardo obeys. He cannot see anything but the white of the snow, cannot see the rocks so he steps carefully, placing his foot on the boot print Chris left behind.

There is a sudden, sharp pain, and blood wells up in the snow. The rock has sliced into the sole of his foot.

“Eduardo,” Chris says, like a warning. He’s not looking at Eduardo, is looking ahead, still moving, and Eduardo grits his teeth and puts his other foot on the rock. He gasps, faintly, at the tearing of his skin, at the blood gushing out into the snow.

He takes another step; still rock. It’s slippery with his blood.

Ahead of him, Chris keeps walking.

Eduardo does too. He moves quickly, fists clenched in his pockets, nails biting deep into his palms. The rock cannot go on forever. It is not too much longer, after all. He can do this. He can keep going.

After a while he stops feeling it, stops feeling anything but the cold. It’s gradual; the burning dies down to an ache, and then to nothing at all, and he has to reach up to check his noses and ears are still there.

The rock ends. He hears the crunching of hard packed snow and looks down.

He’s still bleeding, red smearing against the snow and it makes him shudder and look back up, at Chris’s back.

Chris has flipped the collar of his pea coat up. It’s still snowing, Eduardo realizes suddenly; snowflakes keep falling onto the navy blue wool, keep sticking to Eduardo’s cracked lips.

“Chris,” his voice is hoarse. “How much longer?”

Chris glances back at him, and he’s even paler than before, like the whiteness of the snow is sucking away the color of his skin.

“Not long,” he repeats. “It’s not far.”

 

The trees fade away.  Eduardo doesn’t know where they are; the landscape seems to have no beginning and no end, stretching to and meeting the sky, becoming the sky. The two constants are Chris, in front of him, and the bloody footprints that stretch behind him, to the smudge of the forest they’ve left behind.

This is hell, Eduardo realizes, as the wind begins to blow, driving snowflakes into their faces and making the temperature drop further. This is what happens when you die.

His hands are blue.

Surely, it is not much farther.

 

He’s done this before. Back at Harvard, when he was essentially competing to get into the Phoenix, the Club Vice President – not the President, no, he was far too important to deal with would-be members – had made them stand in front of the Statue of John Harvard without their coats, scarves or mittens.

It had been hazing. It had been cruel. Eduardo had been prepared.

One guy had thrown up. One guy had choked instead of answering, and they had told him to take off his pants. And Eduardo had been asked “What are the three lies?” and recited them all perfectly.

But there has always been more than three lies. He cannot narrow it down, anymore – in the overwhelming barrenness of this place, with his hands turning blue and his feet numb and tracking blood with every step, he cannot lie to himself anymore.

It was not just Mark. It was him, too.

And he will not crawl, like a wounded, bleeding thing, to die in the darkness of a den. He will not hide out for fear of the hunter. He will not keep ducking from a punch, or worse, keep taking it.

You can’t be personal in business. And fuck, he had, hadn’t he? Had known better but had done it anyway because Mark had asked him. It had been cold then, too. Eduardo had said, I can’t feel my legs and Mark had said, I know, I’m really excited about this too.

For as long as Eduardo can remember, his father had been untouchable. Impervious. Hard to make laugh, slow to smile, quick to anger. Always tough, always callused, always in charge.

Eduardo had adored him. Sometimes, as a young boy, he couldn’t sit still in the car and his father would take one hand off the wheel and twist it behind him so he could grab Eduardo’s foot and squeeze until Eduardo was screaming, but Eduardo adored him.

Stop your fussing, his father had told him after one such occasion. You need to toughen up.

Once, when Eduardo had been eight, he had been caught in a rainstorm while playing basketball. His cousins had wanted to go inside and get rain jackets; Eduardo had refused, had stayed and finished the game. After, he ran indoors to find his father, dripping on the polished wooden floors.

Pai! He had said, all of eight years old, tiny and round cheeked and smiling. Pai! It started raining but I didn’t go inside or get a jacket, I stayed outside and won the game! And then, noticing his father’s expression: Pai, aren’t you proud of me?

His father had sneered down at him, lip curling.

Why would I be proud of such an idiot?

And then walked away, leaving Eduardo stammering.

It’s always been a something, whether the abundance of it all or the pointed lack there of, whether it’s been a deluge or the freeze, whether the sky opens up or the ground is hard and frozen. There’s never been an in between.

 

“How much farther?” Eduardo asks. The sky is darkening overhead, stormy grey against the white and he can see far, far, far in every direction. There is nothing but the smudge of trees behind them, deep to the south, and the bloody footprints that map out mile after mile of their slow progress.

Chris pauses, turning to look at Eduardo.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“I thought you said it wasn’t far,” Eduardo says after a minute. He’s stopped shivering, knows rationally, intellectually, that he’s cold but he can’t…he can’t feel it anymore. He just knows that it’s there, just like the snow, like the sky, like the cuts on his feet.

Chris is looking behind them, perhaps measuring the distance, and then he looks back at Eduardo. “I didn’t think it would be.”

“Let’s go, then,” Eduardo groans, exhausted, and takes another step, and then another. Chris falls into step with him. Perhaps where they’re going doesn’t matter. Perhaps the fact they’re still going is what matters.

They will die here, if nothing changes. Maybe they should.

Eduardo pictures the tree again and shudders.

 

The wind is picking up, clouds gathering. Eduardo tries to ignore them, does not look down at his feet, at the smears of red on the snow. Surely he has stopped bleeding by now? Surely they will reach whatever it is they are looking for soon? Surely, they will live.

He thinks back, again, to wearing cargo shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a ridiculous straw hat; to being outside in fifteen degree weather listening to Mark talk rapid fire about Facebook, about the beginning of it.

It was Caribbean night.

He had said, I can’t feel my legs and Mark had said, I know, I’m really excited about this too.

What was it with him? What was it about men who ignored his suffering? Why did he love them? Why Mark?

After all this time, why Mark?

The street lights, the balmy air of summer in New York, walking home arm in arm with Tan. He had said, I need to stop. He had said, Oh. I need to – to stop making people the center of my life. He had said, I don’t really know how to – to not fall into someone’s orbit.

And Tan, beautiful, wonderful Tan, had said, I think you willingly put yourself there. Maybe it’s just where you’re the most comfortable.

Was that why, then? Why he fell for Mark like every bad joke and every cliché, out of every person, out of every gin joint in the world? For Mark’s steely intelligence, his toughness, how he was slow to smile and slow to laugh but quick to anger? For the fact he went out in fifteen degree weather in cargo shorts and flip flops and didn’t even fucking notice the snow? The fact Eduardo had an in and when Mark started paying attention to him, it was like a drug? It was so fucking electric, because he wanted so badly to be wanted, and being needed was close enough.

Did Mark really need him? Or did he just let Eduardo fill this role? Maybe he could see the gaping hole inside Eduardo’s heart and said nothing about it, let Eduardo fuss over him, all while he mapped out every single fault line in Eduardo, all the while figuring out how to bring Eduardo to his knees.

Eduardo would have gone, willingly, if Mark had asked. Would have given Mark everything. He wonders if Mark knows, if he knew, if it matters. Maybe he should have said something.

He remembers reaching for Mark’s shoulder and accidentally touching skin, remembers Mark pressing his cheek to the back of Eduardo’s hand and saying, very slowly, very sweetly, Wardo. He remembers blinking fast, remembers swallowing, remembers shaking. Remembers wanting.

And then – constantly, constantly, Eduardo is not enough for the people in his life. Not a good enough son. Not a good enough CEO. But, he had been a good enough friend.

Mark had wanted everything. The world. Erica’s acknowledgment, admiration, the way Eduardo had wanted his. Recognition for his brilliance. And, perhaps most pettily, the ability to throw this recognition back in everyone’s faces.

But he hadn’t wanted Eduardo. Or maybe he had, and hadn’t known what to do about it (surely that had been Eduardo about Mark, not the other away around). And Eduardo had not been enough.

And…

Was that his fault?

Was there any fault here, in wanting someone, in loving someone?

We love people, and sometimes they hurt us, and we love them anyway.

Alternatively: we love people, and sometimes we hurt them, and they love us anyway.

 

The wind has picked up, gusting, and Eduardo’s shoulders are hunched so much they hurt, his head bowed against the wind. The wind cuts right through his suit, somehow. Beside him, Chris is faring no better; his teeth are chattering. Eduardo’s have long since stopped.

Eduardo stops and glances up. There are clouds now, looming just like the mountains had hours earlier; clouds that promise hail and thunder.

“We’re going to die out here,” he says, voice cracking.

Chris stops too. He’s not looking at the sky. He’s looking at Eduardo.

“Maybe,” he says.

Eduardo turns to look behind, at the parade of bloody footprints, then looks down at the red snow beneath his feet. His socks are unrecognizable, more rusty brown than blue.

Christy had given him these socks, had said proudly she had found the exact color of Facebook! And sometimes, he even forgot about that aspect of them and wore them. They were good, they were comfortable, they breathed.

They had been a mistake to wear, in the dead of winter.

Eduardo exhales.

Facebook had been his fault, maybe. He should have read the papers. He should have clarified. He should have listened.

But Mark – Mark was not his fault. His father was not his fault. His mother, helpless like a pretty bird in a cage and a chain around her leg, was not his fault.

The only things that had been his fault, truly and a hundred percent, was his horrible treatment of Christy and him selling his soul to Tan.

And he can’t regret that last part.

I need to stop, he had told Tan, over a year again, on a muggy New York street. And then, stubbornly, he hadn’t; he had let Mark, let his father, determine important things in his life, like his job.

He had run, had fled, had limped away in the snow like a dying animal.

No more.

 

“Chris,” Eduardo says. “My feet are fucking bleeding.”

Chris looks at him, deathly pale now, eyes huge and dark and unreadable. “I know,” he says.

Eduardo stares at him. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks finally, and Chris – Chris smiles at him. His teeth are too sharp, and there’s too many of them but it’s a smile that Eduardo remembers, the smile of relief.

“Because,” Chris says intently. “You have to help yourself, Eduardo. No one will if you don’t.” And then, very quietly: “Look.”

Eduardo turns, following the direction of Chris’s pointing finger. And there, perhaps five hundred yards from them, is an enormous stone house. There, after all this time, is salvation.

 

*

 

Chris pushes the double doors of the house open with a creak, and then stands aside to let Eduardo in. The snow is evaporating off of his hair and pea coat in great gusts of steam. Eduardo limps forward, and Chris shuts the doors behind them. The thud has the weight of finality.

The floors are polished, shiny wood and for a minute Eduardo is eight years old again, but instead of water, it’s blood that he’s dripping onto the floor.

There is funny noise nearby and he looks around, trying to figure it out. Chris comes up to him, mouth pinched tight, and then cups Eduardo’s cheek with his hand.

His skin is hot. Eduardo stares at him, confused, and then realizes that funny noise is his teeth chattering. He hunches in on himself, eyes flitting around the hallway they are standing in. There’s a mirror, just over Chris’s shoulder. It doesn’t show Chris at all – Eduardo does not so much accept that as ignore it – but it shows him, shiny eyed, shaking like a nervous horse, the snow on his suit jacket reminiscent of the lather of sweat.

His feet hurt, they hurt so fucking much.

“Eduardo,” Chris says, and Eduardo’s eyes snap back to his. Chris is still touching him. “You’re going to be okay. The hardest part is over.”

“Okay,” Eduardo says. His voice creaks. The hand touching his face balls into a fist.

“Follow me.” Chris orders and Eduardo obeys. He looks back only once, to see the bloody footprints parading merrily down the polished hardwood floor.

Chris leads him to a bedroom. There’s a fireplace in front of the bed, already lit and roaring, and for a minute Eduardo just stands in front of it. His entire body feels like it’s burning, the blood rushing back into his extremities. It hurts. Everything fucking hurts.

“Take this off,” Chris says, gesturing at Eduardo’s shirt. As if moving through honey, Eduardo obeys, shedding his suit jacket, unknotting his tie and unbuttoning his shirt before slipping it off. Chris gestures to his pants and Eduardo obeys. Almost everything he’s wearing is sopping wet and half frozen anyway.

When he’s only in his underwear, Chris shoves at his chest until Eduardo sits down on the bed.

“Wait here,” Chris orders, and disappears.

Eduardo is too tired to argue. He stares at the fire. He is so cold, and his feet hurt so much.

His feet…

Eduardo picks up one foot, with difficulty, and rests it on the opposite knee. It is so smeared with blood that he cannot tell the cuts apart from the unharmed flesh.

He is about to touch it when Chris comes back, carrying a large bowl full of water and a satchel.

“Don’t do that.” Chris orders, bending down to place the bowl in front of Eduardo. He kneels and opens the top flap of his satchel, producing towels, bandages, and ointment.

“Chris,” Eduardo protests as Chris takes one foot in too-hot hands. “You don’t have to do this.”

Chris looks up at him, and his eyes are still inhuman and black, but for a minute, blue peeks through.

“I know,” he says, and then begins to wash Eduardo’s feet.

It is not a pleasant experience. Chris’s skin is too hot, and he scrubs away the blood with a very impersonal touch, similar to the way he had touched the rip in Eduardo’s suit, back in the clearing. But it means something, that he’s doing it, and Eduardo respects that.

He waits until Chris has laid one cleaned foot on a towel before speaking.

“What was that place?” and he shudders to think of it, the endless trek through the snow, Chris’s snow, Chris’s jacket, and his blood the only spots of color in the landscapes.

“The Wastes,” Chris says, picking up Eduardo’s left foot.  He begins to scrub too hard, and Eduardo flinches away.

“Stop, that hurts,” he snaps, and Chris smiles at him.

Why didn’t you say anything?

Because, you have to help yourself, Eduardo. No one will if you don’t.

Eduardo exhales. “If I hadn’t spoken up,” he says slowly. “What would have happened?”

“You would have become a demon, and wandered there for all eternity.”

Chris is bent over his feet, inspecting the long cuts that run along the sole of Eduardo’s foot. Eduardo stares at him.

“Would you have left?” his voice is small.

Chris looks up, mouth slightly open and teeth peeking out. But the honest surprise in his face, in his dark, dark eyes, is the same surprise Chris has always had.

“No,” he says, voice hushed like they’re in temple. “No. I would have walked with you for all of eternity.”

“Why?” Eduardo asks, and Chris sits back on his heels. His eyes, for a single instant, are blue.

“Because,” he says, like it is obvious. “I am your friend.”

Eduardo doesn’t, can’t, say anything. Chris smiles at him and then goes back to tending Eduardo’s feet, patting them dry and massaging ointment into his cuts before bandaging them.

By the time he is done, Eduardo is warm, his feet do not hurt so much, and he can barely keep his eyes open.

Chris does not touch him. “C’mon,” he says, southern accent – affected? Did Chris ever live in the south? – peeking out. “Into the bed, Wardo.”

Eduardo obeys, crawling under the covers and collapsing, his head smushed between two pillows.

“I think I tried to kill myself,” he mutters.

Chris tugging the duvet cover up over his shoulders, stops. “You did,” he says, and resumes until Eduardo’s shoulders are covered.

“I’m sorry,” Eduardo whispers, not quite sure the words are intelligible, are audible.

“Go to sleep,” Chris orders him. “You’re safe now.”

Eduardo sleeps.

 

*

 

Tan is there when he wakes up. He’s not surprised. One minute he’s asleep and the next he is waking up gradually, drifting towards consciousness.

When he opens his eyes and turns his head, he sees her, sitting crossed legged to his left.

Eduardo shuts his eyes again.

“Christy had a friend named Alice who we hung out a lot with. She was an art major, with a focus on film. Once she told me that in the typical trope with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, the devil’s always on the left.” He opens his eyes, peeking at Tan again.

“This was the only free side,” Tan says, shrugging, but she’s smiling.

“Christy thought it was really funny,” Eduardo says, sitting up and running a hand through his hair. It’s sticking up everywhere. “I never understand why. But now, it makes sense.”

“I’ve never met her,” Tan says. “But from what I hear, she’s like that.” Her lips twist. “We develop a warped sense of humor if we’re not careful.”

Eduardo considers, for the first time, why Tan steals souls. He had always assumed that it was just…her job, like it as her job to serve as opposition to the order God set out. God was order, Tan was chaos. Done deal.

But – what if it was because Tan was lonely? God has Angels. Who did Tan have?

Tan smiles at him.

“Don’t think too hard,” she advises him. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I think I already did that,” Eduardo mutters, and Tan laughs, a sharp crack of sound like a whip.

“Get dressed,” she orders. “You’ve been asleep for a long while.”

Eduardo watches her slip out of the room, and then obeys. There are clothes at the foot of his bed; socks, jeans, a t-shirt and a fleece. Sturdy leather boots sit neatly next to the pile. There’s even fresh underwear.

Eduardo changes quickly, pausing only to inspect his feet. They’ve healed mostly; fresh pink scars crisscross the soles of his feet. But it no longer hurts to walk, and that’s all he cares about.

Tan is waiting for him outside. She’s in neutral form, in grey skinny jeans, a white shirt and boots like his.

Eduardo spies the mirror from last night, over Tan’s shoulder. She has a reflection in it. He wonders why that is, why she does. This place – and it is Hell, he knows it, he is sure of it – doesn’t seem very much like her at all, doesn’t seem like she designed it or anyone made it with her in mind. It is…peculiar.

He doesn’t know what to think, doesn’t know how long it’s been. He remembers the market going under, remembers running, remembers the car and the snow and the tree…Remembers being here.

“Come on,” Tan says, tucking her hands in her pockets. “I want to show you something.”

 

They walk. The house is full of polished woods and exposed beams and stone. There are too many doors. It doesn’t make sense in any capacities that Eduardo knows; architecture, physics, gravity.

Tan leads him down a long hallway, around corners, down a flight of stairs and finally through a door.

“Don’t be afraid,” she says, pausing on the threshold. “The hardest part is behind you.”

It’s the same thing Chris said, last night, and that lets Eduardo follow her into the room, lets him shut the door.

It’s – an aviary. No.

It’s a room. An enormous room; he cannot see the ceiling. He doesn’t know if a ceiling exists. The room is bare, for the most part. There’s a chair, facing Tan and Eduardo. And, behind the chair, are…birds. Thousands of birds.

Tan and Eduardo move closer, and now Eduardo can see the birds have individual perches that are affixed to the wall. Each bird is tethered by a long silver chain, and each bird is staring at them with beady, suspicious eyes.

“What…what is this?” Eduardo asks in a whisper.

“This is the Wall of Souls,” Tan replies. She doesn’t whisper; she spreads her arms as if to encompass the entire thing. “The most beautiful part of my house.”

Souls. Countless souls, arranged on her wall.

Eduardo had thought that maybe his soul just didn’t exist anymore, or it was like an organ that Tan had extracted and kept in a jar with a heart and some eyeballs. But – this. Somewhere in this teeming, feathered mass was a part of him. A beautiful part of him. A part he had given up.

“Where…?”

Tan points, and Eduardo follows her fingers and sees, maybe fifteen feet above his head, a small, plump bird with green, purple, and white feathers.

“Everyone has…one of these?” he asks, staggering. Tan grips his arm, holding him upright.

“They’re different for everyone,” Tan says. “But yes.”

She does not say, this is what you gave away.  She does not say, you betrayed your own soul. She does not say, live with your choices.

Eduardo has done that. He has done that for four years. Living with his choices. Living with betrayal. Living with a mistake.

“Does…does it hate me?” He asks, glancing at Tan. Her eyes are soft.

“No,” she says gently. “Souls hate no one. They have no minds of their own. They are a basic part of you. They want only the warmth of a hearth and something to love.” She pauses. “No one hates you…but you, Eduardo.”

He says nothing at all.

 

The door behind them opens and then shuts, and someone clears their throat. Eduardo, so transfixed with staring at his soul, does not turn around, but Tan does.

“Oh,” she says. Eduardo’s soul cocks its head and stares at Eduardo, who stares back. “Chris. Perfect.”

Eduardo does turn around then. Chris is leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets. His eyes are still black; maybe that’s a part of being here. Eduardo doesn’t know.

“Chris is going to be your guide,” Tan informs him. “I have work to do. I’ll see you later.”

She seems to sense Eduardo’s reluctance because she adds with a smile, “no more Wastes, Eduardo. You never have to do that again.”

Chris offers Eduardo a small smile. “Come on,” he orders. “I have something to show you.”

 

Eduardo can’t keep track of where they are going. Chris leads him out the door, back up the stairs and down a few hallways, and then they were outside of the house, and the warmth of the air is palpable, is like a slap. Eduardo begins sweating immediately. He wrestles off his fleece and ties it around his waist, resigning himself to looking like a middle aged soccer mom.

“Are we…in the desert?” Eduardo asks.

“Yes.”

And they are. It is the exact opposite of the Wastes; there is red stone and orange earth and grey-green plants. Enormous mountains jut out of the earth, reaching towards a blue sky streaked with white. It looks like Arizona, or Nevada, or New Mexico. One of those states, where the desert is as limitless as the sky.

“Come on,” Chris says again. He starts walking. Eduardo falls into step with him.

For a while they walk in silence, the house growing smaller behind them. Chris is following a path or trail that Eduardo can’t see, and they begin to head uphill. Eduardo is embarrassingly out of shape, for all that he walks everywhere in New York. But here, under the blazing sun, it is different. He is tired in the same way he is thirsty – distantly. Annoying, but not pressing.

Eduardo licks his lips. “Where are we going?” he asks. It’s been maybe half an hour since they started walking. He checks his watch, out of habit; it’s still frozen. He wonders if it’s frozen in the real world, in his world.

“There.” Chris points at a small tree, maybe 3/4s up the slope of the mountain. Eduardo groans, inwardly, and hurries to keep up.

 

For the first hour, they don’t speak. Eduardo is embarrassed by how ragged his breathing is, how he struggles to keep up, how he trips over loose stones. After a while, he stops keeping track of that, stops keeping track of the climb. He focuses on looking around, at the desert. The vastness of it all. How desolate and barren it is, in a completely different way than anything with snow and ice.

He sees no people, no roads, no wildlife. There is no wind. The only thing that proves this isn’t a movie set is the movement of the sun above them, heading further and further west.

During the second hour, Chris starts talking.

“I was born in 1427,” he says quietly. “In a small village called Sondrio, in northern Italy.” They’re climbing the mountain in earnest now. To one side is rock; the other is open air. Chris pauses and looks out and down below. “My name was Cristoforo.”

Eduardo pauses next to him, but does not look back to mark their progress. He doesn’t like heights. Instead he watches Chris, studies his face.

“My parents were farmers, like most everyone in Sondrio. We were wealthy, I suppose. We had cattle, and sheep, and land. My mother was my father’s second wife; his first died in childbirth. I was his fourth son.” Chris starts walking again. “We were simple folk. But I wanted more.

“When I was fifteen, Francesco Sforza marched against southern Italy. I ran away and joined his cause.”

“But – you were a child.”

“I was considered a man,” Chris manages to shrug while navigating the slopes. “They were desperate for people. They let me. They shouldn’t have,” he laughs bitterly, “I could have gotten our regiment killed for my inexperience. But they did.

“We won, after a time. It took two or three years, I can’t quite remember. I got very good at being a soldier. Got promoted out of necessity; I stayed alive while others did not. I fought by Francesco’s side against our enemy, Piccinino.” Chris stops. “I greatly admired Francesco. I pledged myself to him – to serve him, as a soldier. Not…” Chris stops again. “I didn’t want a wife. I wanted to fight. And when I saw how terrible war was…I still wanted it. I was good at it. The fourth son is rarely good at anything. Besides, I was bringing glory to my family, to my village. The whole army knew of Sondrio because of me.”

Eduardo reaches over and grabs Chris’s shoulder, and Chris sighs. Eduardo has heard this before – not the story, but the hope. The want. To be good. To be known. To be loved.

“For men like me…like Cristoforo…the army made sense. I didn’t need a wife, wouldn’t be required to take one. It was a hard, miserable life. But it was mine.”

Chris lapses into silence for a time, and Eduardo lets go of him and tries to remember if he knows anything about Francesco Sforza. He doesn’t. He never liked European history, and everything he did know was long after 1427.

“Francesco grew more and more powerful. He settled in Milan, with his wife, Bianca Maria. She was…wonderful. Very brave. You would have liked her. She was a daughter of the Duke of Milan. And Francesco became the chief general of Milan’s armies.

“And then, in 1447, Bianca Maria’s father died without an heir. She was illegitimate, you see. And everything went very badly.” Abruptly, the path levels out. Chris keeps walking, towards the tree. It is smaller than Eduardo thought, twisted down and gnarled by the wind.

Overhead, the sun begins to set. The sky is bright, shading from blue to orange.

Time moves so oddly, in Hell.

“Members of a University wanted to make a republic,” Chris says, pausing at the tree. He pulls on his fleece; Eduardo copies him. The temperature has begun to fall. “Francesco agreed, initially, and we marched off to conquer the cities in the republic. First we captured Pavia, then Piacenza. We could do no wrong. It was…complicated, very political.” Chris waves an impatient hand. “Current politics are child’s play. But I was a child, back then.

“There were other forces, attacking other cities, Lodi and Caravaggio. The sieges were going poorly. So we went to Caravaggio, and labored there for the whole summer. And then.” Chris stops, sighs. “Our allies, the Venetians, turned on us. It was so fast, we didn’t even have time to buckle our armor.” Chris stops again. “I don’t remember it very well.”

“You died.” Eduardo whispers, and Chris nods.

“I took two arrows for My Lord,” it’s the first time Chris has called Francesco that. “And three more…I don’t know why.” He laughs. “They knew me. The commander of the Venetians knew me. They knew I was respected, well-liked. A skilled tactician and fighter. They made sure I would not rise out of Caravaggio.”

Eduardo has seen Chris shirtless, even seen him mostly naked. And he remembers five moles scattered across Chris’s torso; two across his abdomen, three on his chest.

As if he can hear Eduardo’s thoughts, Chris shoves up his fleece and shirt, and there they are. Illuminated in the light of the dying sun, the sky exploding above them, Eduardo’s fingers shaking as he touches each mole. Each remnant of a wound, of a death.

Chris inhales sharply each time Eduardo touches him, but he does not flinch away. It is Eduardo that moves away, and Chris pulls down his shirt and fleece again, and then settles beneath the tree. Eduardo joins him.

They sit, and watch the colors skid across the sky, moving fast fast fast until there is nothing left but darkness. There wasn’t even a moon, just the blankness of the sky above, and the words _they made sure I would not rise out of Caravaggio_ echoing in Eduardo’s head.

“Tan came to me,” Chris says, in the darkness. His eyes gleam. “I was too stubborn to die, I was too young. I was twenty-three.” A pause. “I sold my soul so that Francesco might become Duke of Milan.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.” Chris laughs again, and it’s a darker sound, something that makes the hairs on the back of Eduardo’s neck stand up. “He founded the Sforza dynasty in Milan. He was a good ruler, from what I hear. A patron of the arts.”

There are so many things Eduardo wants to ask. Did you kill the men who killed you? What happened to the men that betrayed you and Francesco? Did you help Francesco conquer Milan?

“Did you love him?” is what he asks instead.

“No,” Chris says, very gently. “I loved what he meant.” A pause. “I have never…” he trails off, does not finish. “I worked behind the scenes to help him secure power. Everyone I knew, knew me to be dead. And when he did secure power, I faced the Wastes, and emerged.”

“I asked Tan how old you were once,” Eduardo says conversationally, because he has nothing else to say. Nothing else to offer. “She didn’t know the exact number.”

“581 years old,” Chris says. “I don’t know my birthday. It doesn’t really matter. It changes depending on who I am, who I need to be.”

There’s a rustling on the path. Eduardo looks around.

“That’s Tan,” Chris says. “She’s on her way. She’ll be an hour more, at least.” He turns, so Eduardo can see his face. “Eduardo…I don’t want this for you. None of it. I sold my soul for revenge and power. I don’t regret it. I don’t know how much difference it made. I’ve stopped thinking about it. But you – I never wanted this for you.”

“I’m sorry,” Eduardo whispers.

Chris doesn’t say anything.

 

Stars begin to peek out. Eduardo tilts his head up and stares at foreign constellations. His throat is dry. He wonders about Preeta and Divya. About Max, and Deidre, and Helena. About Mark. He misses Mark.

“I’m thirsty,” he says finally, although it’s still in a distant sort of way. He’s losing time the way he does when he sleeps; in fits and gaps.

Chris smiles. “If you ate or drank anything here, you would be unable to leave,” he explains.

“The legend is true?”

“All of them are, a little bit.”

Silence again.

“I wish I could start over,” Eduardo whispers.

Chris, briefly, covers Eduardo’s hand with his and squeezes. Eduardo doesn’t know what it means.

 

When Tan emerges, Chris stands and starts back down the path. Tan takes his spot, sitting next to Eduardo under the tree. Eduardo doesn’t know how long it’s been. He doesn’t know if Hell has 24 hour days. It hasn’t been eight hours, and yet dawn is coming.

How long has it been in his world? How long has he laid in the snow, alone, the wheels of his ruined car still spinning?

The sky is lightening enough that Eduardo knows it isn’t false dawn. This is the real thing; the darkness is slowly falling away, shattering right before his eyes.

Tan sits next to him, her thigh against his, and there is very human warmth coming off of her. For all that she was not human, for all that this was Hell, for all that Eduardo was dying in another world, in his world.

But for now, the stars were fading above them, and the dark rocks that towered above them were only barely holding back the sun from its sky.

“Tan?” Eduardo asks, eyes fixed on the sky. “If you could stop the sun from rising, would you?”

He drags his eyes to her face, brown skinned and doe eyed. She looks at him, eyebrows raised. Her expression is so open, so guileless, that he forgets (again) who she is, who he is, where they are.

“Why would I want to?” She asks in return, leaning back on her elbows and craning her neck to stare up ahead.

“To…to prove you could,” Eduardo answers. He rubs the back of his neck, hot despite the coolness of dawn. “Is that a human thing to ask? I’m sorry.”

Tan waits until he looks at her before answering. “Don’t apologize,” she orders. “Never apologize for being human.” She’s smiling faintly, lips barely curving up, and then she looks away.

“I wouldn’t,” she confesses. “Never. The sun…it’s something bigger then me. It’s a reminder that no matter what I do, there’s always something else, something bigger, something greater. And I wouldn’t change that for anything.”

“How can it be greater?” Eduardo demands. He’s heard this existentialist comfort before, has never understood it. But he’s never sat in a desert that stretches for miles and miles, has never transversed the Wastes of Souls before, has never sold his soul before. Has never seen life on the other side of a mistake, of a bullet.

Tan is looking at him again. “You’re an angel. You’re The Devil. Twin to God. How is anything greater than you?”

“I didn’t make this,” Tan replies, waving an elegant hand. “It was made, and we were made to fill it, to rule it, to care for it.”

“Who made you?”

“I don’t know. Something else. Someone else.”

“And who made them?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you know not?!” Eduardo demands, suddenly heated. “It has to end somewhere. You have to know.”

Tan looks up at the mountains. Eduardo suddenly remembers the name for them. Buttes. He had laughed when he learned it, in Geology. The sun is barely peeking out behind them.

“To the sun, I don’t matter,” Tan tells him. “Neither do you. Neither does Facebook, or Mark Zuckerberg. None of humanity matters. Everything on earth could die and the sun would still rise and set. In the face of that…would you ever want to take away something that doesn’t care about your mistakes?”

Eduardo doesn’t answer. He watches the sun slowly edge up, watches the sky explode with color. The buttes are a swirled red-orange with hints of white. Everything before him and around him is beautiful. He cannot be further away from that snowy hell, or from his car, speeding out of New York City.

This is not his life.

“It could be,” Tan says, and Eduardo wonders if she hears all of his thoughts. “You could stay here, Eduardo. Until time’s time is up. You would want for nothing, would need nothing…would feel no pain.”

“But I would leave people behind,” Eduardo whispers, and he can see them now. Can see Preeta, laughing as she beats him in beer pong. Can see Divya, kissing Preeta on the neck. Can see Max and Deidre watching Helena taking her first, trundling steps. Can see Chris, leaning against a doorway and smiling, blue eyes lit up. Can see his Pai and Mãe, waltzing around the foyer of his house in Miami. Can see Dustin, throwing a ping pong ball at the ceiling and spinning in his chair. Can see Mark, laughing at Dustin, red vine held in one hand, his mouth a telltale red. Can see himself, sitting on a bench in Central Park and looking…happy.

His visions fade, and he can see Tan watching him carefully.

“Time to choose,” Tan’s voice is so quiet he wonders if she’s actually spoken at all, or if it’s just sounding in his head. Maybe all of this is only in his head. Maybe hell isn’t real at all. “Live,” Tan says it very clearly. “Or die.”

Eduardo looks away.

“Will it hurt?” he asks. “Choosing?”

“The act of choosing itself? No. But it may, depending on what you choose.” Tan pauses. “If you stay here, it won’t hurt. You will simply…pass, between one breath and the next. Between heartbeats.”

“Is that what we are to you?” Eduardo asks, out of a clinical fascination, out of a need for distance. “Something that lives and dies between heartbeats?”

“No,” Tan answers, so sternly that Eduardo looks at her. “You are my entire life. You are my purpose. You are my charges.”

“If I go…if I live…”

“I don’t know,” Tan says before he can ask his question. “But living always hurts, Eduardo. You are proof of that. You have hurt so much, in such a short time.”

“Is that why you’re doing this? Are you bending the rules for me?” Eduardo asks, and Tan smirks at him, a smirk that is sharp enough to draw blood. The Devil is the deity of Chaos. Rules do not apply. Eduardo keeps forgetting.

He gives up, changes the subject. “Will this dissolve our bargain?”

“No,” Tan answers, and manages to be apologetic about it. “Nothing can dissolve our bargain.”

The top of the sun is above the top of the buttes, now. It is morning. It is time.

Eduardo thinks about all of his friends, of his family, about Mark. But mostly, he thinks about himself.

“I don’t think,” he says, very slowly, and he doesn’t know who he’s talking to. To Tan. To himself. To the vastness of the desert, to the majesty of the Sun, to places and things that do not care but still inspire life. “That it’s too late.”

Tan stands. “It’s not,” she replies. “if you don’t want it to be.”

Eduardo stands as well, with some difficulty, and brushes off the dirt from his pants.

“It will be hard,” Tan warns. “It will hurt.” She offers him her hand, palm up.

Eduardo thinks, again, of his friends. And again, of himself, happy and relaxed on a park in Central Park, the sun shining down on him.

“It’ll be worth it,” he replies. “I think – it always has been.” Slowly, hesitantly, he takes her hand, palm sliding against hers.

Tan smiles, lips moving, and the world buckles and then spins, like a car skidding on ice, like a car colliding with a tree.

Eduardo breathes.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

2009

 

 _Beep. Beep. Beep_.

Eduardo opens his eyes.

He is not in the snows of upstate New York, or the ruins of his new car. He’s in a hospital bed, hooked up to IVs, and he has no idea how he got there.

He turns his head, and after everything, it’s not a surprise, not really, to see Mark there. Mark, sitting by his side, clutching a ragged looking Northface jacket, his eyes closed and mouth folded into a thin line.

As Eduardo watches, Mark rocks, very slowly, forward and then back. Eduardo has not seen Mark in almost four years but he can read Mark easily enough still – Mark is concentrating. Mark, an atheist, is drawing on everything he knows of holy things.

And, as if in a daze, as if history is repeating itself, Eduardo asks – as he had, all those years ago – “Mark? Are you praying?”

His voice isn’t much more than a ragged whisper, his throat is on fire but he’s _alive_ , somehow, and Mark – Mark is here, and he has Eduardo’s _fucking missing jacket, god fucking damnit_.

Mark freezes, and then opens his eyes.

Eduardo had – forgotten. What it was like, to look at him. To see Mark, not in memories twisted by emotion but in the flesh – his messy curls, chapped lips, pale skin, skinny shoulders. The intensity of his gaze. The tension with which he held himself, tension of a fencer, of an athlete. The focus he so rarely gives people, preferring to turn it on Facebook; the focus he was giving Eduardo now.

“Wardo,” Mark says, so softly that something in Eduardo cracks the way it had at Holi. He feels cracked open, struggling to hatch from the proverbial egg, a fracture beginning outside and hammering home to his beating, beating heart.

“Mark,” Eduardo whispers, and does not pull away when Mark grabs his hand.

 

Mark holds his hand for two heartbeats – two moments that encapsulate what could have been, if they hadn’t fucked up so badly. The agony and frustration of the past years crash violently with the knowledge that they could have been perfect, together. They could have _lasted_. They could have loved.

They did love, in a misguided way.

Eduardo is very, very tired, and so glad to be alive.

 

Mark knows – he can tell. Feels the same. For once all of his feelings are splashed out across his face, across those absurd cheekbones, his lush mouth twisting. His eyes are wet. Eduardo wants to look away but doesn’t, bears witness. He never had the luxury of encountering something that could have been perfect, the missing piece in his life, only to have it snatched away after only moments. He has been living with the slow, decaying love of theirs for years. But Mark – Mark has not. Mark has come far too late.

 

Eduardo lets go of Mark’s hand, and smiles. “I’m so happy to see you,” he whispers, and he _means_ it, lets the ugly, dying thing crawl out of his chest until there’s nothing of it left. Until there’s only Eduardo, looking at Mark.

“You woke up,” Mark says, voice cracking. “Wardo – you were in a coma. I didn’t.” he stops talking, stands and walks to a table at the foot of Eduardo’s bed, where there’s a pitcher of water and cups. He pours Eduardo one, and Eduardo can see that Mark is shaking, a refined tremor. He feels like shaking two. He wonders at sharing his heart with Mark, still, even when the time has long since passed. It’s like they don’t share only a heart anymore, but a nervous system. Like they’ve been separated for years, and can only now slot comfortably together.

“Mark,” Eduardo says. Mark has turned his back, is undoubtedly trying to master his expression. “Mark, I’ve missed you so much.”

“Wardo,” is all Mark says, helplessly. “Wardo.”

 

The nurses are called, and fuss over Eduardo. Mark holds the cup of water to his lips because Eduardo’s hands feel too heavy to use. He panics, then, and is assured that he has full working use of his body, but it will take a while for him to be up and walking.

At some point during this explanation, he falls asleep again.

 

*

 

When he wakes up, Preeta and Divya are there, Divya with his arm around a crying Preeta.

Eduardo peers at her, groggy, and mumbles, “don’t cry, please.”

“ _EDUARDO!”_ Preeta shrieks, and flings herself at him, then tries to pull back at the last minute. Eduardo grunts, and lets her hug him.

She’s crying, she won’t stop crying. Divya is also crying, and he rounds Eduardo’s bed and hugs Eduardo too, laughing when Eduardo splutters.

“You fucking asshole,” Preeta sniffs. “I thought…”

“You’re not the first person to say that,” Eduardo mumbles.

“Next time, if you want to go on a little snowy adventure, take us so you don’t get yourself killed. Honestly, you need to learn how to drive in ice.”

 _What_.

“I…”

“It’s a miracle someone saw you and called 911, Eduardo. _God_. The skid marks – do you remember it at all?”

“…no,” Eduardo lies, and Divya puts a hand on Preeta’s arm.

“Love, Eduardo just woke up. Let’s give him a minute, yes? I’ve rung for the nurses.”

And then nurses come, and doctors, and Divya and Preeta leave, Preeta promising to call his parents – how did she get their number? – and Eduardo undergoes too many tests.

 

*

 

He fractured his skull, because he is, in Preeta’s words, “a complete fucking moron.” Obviously, he had a very severe concussion from that. He also has partially healed broken ribs, a ruptured spleen (they removed it) and a partially healed broken arm.

He’s been in a coma for six weeks.

“So next time you decide to drive on black ice, use studded tires,” Preeta snaps. She’s been saying this a lot.

“Hey, I’m sure he did his best,” Divya says. “Those skid marks – he tried.”

Eduardo keeps quiet. He’s on a lot of pain medicine, which makes everything sort of…softer, but he knows that he didn’t try to stop the car. There shouldn’t be any skid marks. And who happened to be in the middle of no-where at 4 am to call 911 anonymously?

Tan, probably.

Eduardo sighs.

 

*

 

His parents come – have been in New York for the last six weeks, actually. His Mãe sobs, clutching his hand in both of hers. Eduardo awkwardly pats her with his non-broken arm.

His father also cries, but silently, hanging back until Eduardo reaches for him. Then he comes forward and pats Eduardo’s legs.

 _“We’re glad you woke up.”_ He says in Portuguese, his voice thick.

 _“Me too.”_ Eduardo replies in the same language.

His father is no longer the man from Eduardo’s memories – he is just a small, tired old man that eats too much pasta. The father from Eduardo’s memories didn’t _care_ about Eduardo. This one does.

Eduardo doesn’t know how to feel about that, doesn’t know if he’ll _ever_ know how to feel about that.

Maybe all of this is just the morphine, he thinks. Maybe I’m imagining it.

 

*

 

Max, Deidre and Helena visit. Deidre cries. So does Helena, but not over Eduardo. Max just clasps Eduardo’s hands in his calloused ones and explains they brought Eduardo a casserole, because “hospital food is the pits.”

“How’s the market?” Eduardo asks, because he can’t help himself. And then: “Sorry I couldn’t babysit Helena on New Years Eve.”

Deidre actually slaps him for that. It’s not his finest joke.

“The market is…awful,” Max says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “WaMu was bought out. But dude, don’t think about that right now. You’re _alive_. How miraculous is that?”

Eduardo thinks about Tan, and choosing, and the wall of souls. About Chris’s five arrows, and hiking, and the differences between sunsets and sunrises.

“It’s…pretty miraculous, alright,” he says.

Helena throws her stuffed rabbit at him.

 

*

 

Chris doesn’t visit him. Eduardo doesn’t blame him.

He sees Chris once, on TV – in Obama’s entourage. Chris’s hair is a little longer than normal, his eyes are blue, and he’s all Eduardo can look at, never mind that Obama is giving a speech.

He never asked – and he meant too – which bird was Chris’s. He doesn’t allow himself to wonder.

 

*

 

The Winklevii also visit. They bring Eduardo flowers, which makes him feel like a grandmother.

“These are so nice,” he says awkwardly, reaching for the roses with his good arm. “I’ve always liked yellow roses.”

“We wanted to get you something else, but January makes for poor flower growing season,” Tyler – or Cameron? – explains.

“We’re really glad you’re okay,” the other twin says.

Eduardo smiles. “Thanks. I am, too.”

“Next time you want to go to the Adirondacks, let us know,” one of them says. “Our family has a house up there. You can stay there whenever.”

“Wow,” Eduardo stammers. “Thanks.”

The twins grin down at him, and Eduardo grins back up at them.

 

*

 

And, throughout all of this – Mark. Mark sticks around, clutching _Eduardo’s_ jacket. Mark talks to nurses and doctors about Eduardo’s condition. Mark avoids Preeta and Divya and the Winklevii – Divya and the Winklevii because they’re suing him, Preeta because she threatened to castrate him.

“You’re friends with them, now?” Mark asks, confused, and Eduardo sighs.

“Yes. Divya and Preeta are my best friends, and the Winklevii – well, Cameron and Tyler are really nice.” Eduardo pauses. “I’d like to be friends with you too, Mark. If that’s okay.”

Mark fidgets for about half a second, then forces himself to quiet. The air of _almost_ hangs over them, and Eduardo doesn’t know how to talk about it, doesn’t know if he wants too. He has spent so long thinking about it, and now it is…gone, as much as it will ever be.

It’s as if Mark took a part of him, all those years ago when Eduardo met him. Not Eduardo’s heart, which Eduardo offered to him on a shiny platter. At least, not all of it. But maybe some of it, maybe a small but integral part of it. A part Eduardo will never get back.

But if Mark took part of Eduardo, surely Eduardo took a part of Mark. Surely Eduardo has a sliver of Mark in him somewhere, perhaps where his soul should be. Surely when this life is said and done, they will find each other in the next, or their molecules will find each other, will form new stars, new galaxies, new lovers. New frontiers. New revolutions.

“Yes,” Mark says, and doesn’t say _and that’s all?_ Because he knows. He is a man who is grieving, and Eduardo isn’t anymore. “I’d like that.”

Eduardo smiles.

 

*

 

He’s released from the hospital two weeks later, after promising to come back in for all of his check ups and to abstain from drinking or operating machinery.

(Not that he has any machinery to operate – his new car is ruined. Divya shows him a photo of the crash site and the mangled corpse of his Audi. Eduardo also notices the dramatic skid marks that mark the road.

“Damn,” he whispers, though not for the reason Divya thinks, and Divya claps him on the back.)

Eduardo drops the lawsuit against Mark. He does lets Mark keep his Northface. He doesn’t need it, and Mark – Mark does. That is Mark’s piece of him, Mark’s talisman and touchstone and key all in one. It’s fucked up. They were fucked up.

It doesn’t hurt to admit that anymore. It doesn’t hurt to let it go.

 

Eduardo starts going to AA meetings, because getting drunk when he’s upset, or scared, or angry, or sad, isn’t working. In fact, it almost got him killed.

That and – Eduardo himself. So he starts going to therapy too, grudgingly, and _grudgingly_ agrees to take the medication he’s prescribed.

He doesn’t know how to tell people that his car crash was a suicide attempt. He doesn’t know how to explain most of his life, from Facebook to selling his soul to the devil to…this. To being alive, here, now.

Miraculous, indeed.

 

Tan finds him outside one of the meetings – and it had been a _good_ meeting, a hard meeting. A man had shared about alcoholism as a legacy in the family and Eduardo hadn’t stopped fidgeting, had gotten a lot of sympathetic looks.

She’s wearing her neutral form, in slacks, boots, a button up shirt, and a sweater. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows – she doesn’t seem to notice the cold – and she’s smiling at Eduardo.

“How is it?” She asks, carefully not touching him.

Eduardo pauses next to her, clutching his cup of coffee. He’s cold, even if it’s a mild February day.

“Good,” he says, and means it. Because all of this – being alive, reconnecting with his family, with Mark, with himself – is good. Is worth it.

Tan grins, and grabs his coffee. Eduardo notices, like he has a thousand times, her tattoo. This is, however, the first time he can read it.

“ _’Homo, fuge?_ ’” he quotes, brow furrowing. “Isn’t that…?”

“’Fly, man!’” Tan quotes, nodding. “Yup.”

“But that’s…”

“From _Dr. Faustus_ ,” Tan agrees. “Faustus is about to make his deal with the devil, and an angel appears and tells him to flee. And, like an idiot, Faustus ignores the angel.”

“You got _that_ as a tattoo?” Eduardo demands.

Tan smirks at him.

Eduardo can’t help it – he cracks up. Everyone but Tan ignores him, because this is New York and no one has any patience for a bizarre laughing man.

When he calms down, Tan smiles and gives him his coffee back.

“Were you looking for me?” Eduardo asks, and Tan nods, looking away, out into the distance.

“I was,” she said. “I have something for you.” She reaches over and slaps him, _hard_ , on the back. Eduardo chokes, coughs. It sounds like bird song.

He doesn’t feel any different. Cold, shaky, achy from his still healing ribs.

“Wanted to let you know,” Tan says, and now she does turn to look at him, face elegant and serious. “Contract’s void.”

“But –”

“You were drunk,” Tan shrugs. “Doesn’t count. Consent, and all that.”

“Tan – this is against the rules –”

“And I break the rules,” she reminds him. “It’s my job.”

“ _Tan_.”

“Eduardo.” Tan interrupts him. “You got your soul back. You got a second chance. What are you waiting for?” She smiles. “ _Homo, fuge._ Fly, Eduardo. It’s time. It’s _been_ time.”

He doesn’t – he’s so confused – and part of him, a small feathery part, is singing. Is warm. Is there to love, and be loved, and nothing more.

“What about you?” he asks finally.

“I’ll be around,” she promises. “But now? I’ve got a hot date.”

“A date?”

Tan winks, then steps forward and kisses him on the forehead. “Fly,” she whispers in his ear, and then saunters off.

Eduardo, watching her, sees Erica waiting for Tan. Erica, who is both Erica and the woman from outside the coffee shop. Erica, who isn’t really Erica at all.

Erica winks at him, and then wraps an arm around Tan’s shoulders and kisses her.

 _Damn_.

They walk away.

 

Eduardo loses sight of them in the crowd. For a minute, he takes it all in – the people, all the movement, all the life, all the noise.

Eduardo smiles.

He flips up the collar of his coat and begins to head home, bracing himself against the wind. As he reaches the corner of the block, it begins to snow.

**Author's Note:**

> So many notes!! Ok be gentle.  
> 1) Erica/God's face claims are: long haired Rooney Mara, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, various.  
> Tan's face claims are: Samira Wiley, Angie Cepeda, goth Rinko Kikuchi, brunette Natalie Dormer, various.  
> 2) Tan and God/Erica are both non binary beings but are in the form of/perceived as woman women by Eduardo, which is sort of explained in the fic. They're pretty queer - he sees them as cool lesbians, but they aren't actually women. Their genders are too awesome/too much for Eduardo to understand since he's a lil human idiot. Similarly, God/Erica and Tan have a variety of appearances in the story because casting one race or one body type as 'order' and 'chaos' or 'good' and 'evil' seemed very irresponsible and racist.  
> 3) the real Eduardo Saverin is culturally and ethnically Jewish but is non practicing. Since many branches of Judaism don't believe in hell, but hell is such a large part of this story, it made sense to work outside the parameters of established religion such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc with regards to what God and the Devil actually mean/who they are. There are nods to Eduardo's background and faith, but I didn't want to incorporate too much since that would also mean invalidating parts of it.  
> 4) The idea of the devil being on the left side is a real trope and comes directly from the play Dr. Faustus, which is also where Tan's tattoo (and the title of this fic) is from. In Dr. Faustus for those of you who don't know, Dr. Faustus sells his soul to the devil for essentially 30 years of being the coolest cat around, and then really really regrets it. He also ignores an angel that flies all the way from heaven to tell him to stop being an idiot.  
> 5) The Venetians really did attack Francesco Sforza at Caravaggio so quickly he didn't even get his armor on, but he really did kick their ass and go on to establish the Sforza dynasty. He was a cool dude. But his wife, Bianca Maria Visconti, was way cooler than him. As far as Chris goes, that's totally fictional. Sondrio is a real place but there's no record of anyone from there named Cristoforo who became one of Francesco's right hand dudes. _Poetic license._  
>  6) Eduardo's soul is a [Violet-Green Swallow,](http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/PHOTO/LARGE/vgsw_parsons2.jpg) which is the cutest birdy ever.
> 
> It really took a village. This is such a long meandering fic that is not at all about Mark and Eduardo, it's mainly just about Eduardo getting over a lot of stuff and facing his demons (haha) so thank you for sticking with it. Also let me repeat myself in thanking Mina, Alex, Aren, Fran, Fox, Mia, Divya and everyone else.
> 
> [visit me on tumblr!](http://marnz.tumblr.com/) prompts welcome.


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